A Textbook Definition of Cowardice

Keith Olbermann comments on Bill Clinton's Fox News interview


By Keith Olbermann
Anchor MSNBC News
Sept. 26, 2006

The headlines about them are, of course, entirely wrong.

It is not essential that a past president, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back.

It is not important that the current President’s portable public chorus has described his predecessor’s tone as “crazed.”

Our tone should be crazed. The nation’s freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as al Qaida; the nation’s marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would’ve quit.

Nonetheless.

The headline is this:

Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done in five years.

He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration.

"At least I tried," he said of his own efforts to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. "That’s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They had eight months to try; they did not try. I tried."

Thus in his supposed emeritus years has Mr. Clinton taken forceful and triumphant action for honesty, and for us; action as vital and as courageous as any of his presidency; action as startling and as liberating, as any, by any one, in these last five long years.

The Bush Administration did not try to get Osama bin Laden before 9/11.

The Bush Administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors.

The Bush Administration did not understand the Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S."

The Bush Administration did not try.

Moreover, for the last five years one month and two weeks, the current administration, and in particular the President, has been given the greatest “pass” for incompetence and malfeasance in American history!

President Roosevelt was rightly blamed for ignoring the warning signs—some of them, 17 years old—before Pearl Harbor.

President Hoover was correctly blamed for—if not the Great Depression itself—then the disastrous economic steps he took in the immediate aftermath of the Stock Market Crash.

Even President Lincoln assumed some measure of responsibility for the Civil War—though talk of Southern secession had begun as early as 1832.

But not this president.

To hear him bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been president on September 11th, 2001 -- or the nearly eight months that preceded it.

That hardly reflects the honesty nor manliness we expect of the executive.

But if his own fitness to serve is of no true concern to him, perhaps we should simply sigh and keep our fingers crossed, until a grown-up takes the job three Januarys from now.

Except for this.

After five years of skirting even the most inarguable of facts—that he was president on 9/11 and he must bear some responsibility for his, and our, unreadiness, Mr. Bush has now moved, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards re-writing history, and attempting to make the responsibility, entirely Mr. Clinton’s.

Of course he is not honest enough to do that directly.

As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he is having it done for him, by proxy.

Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News Friday afternoon.

Consider the timing: the very weekend the National Intelligence Estimate would be released and show the Iraq war to be the fraudulent failure it is—not a check on terror, but fertilizer for it.

The kind of proof of incompetence, for which the administration and its hyenas at Fox need to find a diversion, in a scapegoat.

It was the kind of cheap trick which would get a journalist fired—but a propagandist, promoted:

Promise to talk of charity and generosity; but instead launch into the lies and distortions with which the Authoritarians among us attack the virtuous and reward the useless.

And don’t even be professional enough to assume the responsibility for the slanders yourself; blame your audience for “e-mailing” you the question.

Mr. Clinton responded as you have seen.

He told the great truth untold about this administration’s negligence, perhaps criminal negligence, about bin Laden.

He was brave.

Then again, Chris Wallace might be braver still. Had I in one moment surrendered all my credibility as a journalist, and been irredeemably humiliated, as was he, I would have gone home and started a new career selling seeds by mail.

The smearing by proxy, of course, did not begin Friday afternoon.

Disney was first to sell-out its corporate reputation, with "The Path to 9/11." Of that company’s crimes against truth one needs to say little. Simply put: someone there enabled an Authoritarian zealot to belch out Mr. Bush’s new and improved history.

The basic plot-line was this: because he was distracted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Bill Clinton failed to prevent 9/11.

The most curious and in some ways the most infuriating aspect of this slapdash theory, is that the Right Wingers who have advocated it—who try to sneak it into our collective consciousness through entertainment, or who sandbag Mr. Clinton with it at news interviews—have simply skipped past its most glaring flaw.

Had it been true that Clinton had been distracted from the hunt for bin Laden in 1998 because of the Monica Lewinsky nonsense, why did these same people not applaud him for having bombed bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan and Sudan on Aug. 20, of that year? For mentioning bin Laden by name as he did so?

That day, Republican Senator Grams of Minnesota invoked the movie "Wag The Dog."

Republican Senator Coats of Indiana questioned Mr. Clinton’s judgment.

Republican Senator Ashcroft of Missouri—the future attorney general—echoed Coats.

Even Republican Senator Arlen Specter questioned the timing.

And of course, were it true Clinton had been “distracted” by the Lewinsky witch-hunt, who on earth conducted the Lewinsky witch-hunt?

Who turned the political discourse of this nation on its head for two years?

Who corrupted the political media?

Who made it impossible for us to even bring back on the air, the counter-terrorism analysts like Dr. Richard Haass, and James Dunegan, who had warned, at this very hour, on this very network, in early 1998, of cells from the Middle East who sought to attack us, here?

Who preempted them in order to strangle us with the trivia that was, “All Monica All The Time”?

Who distracted whom?

This is, of course, where—as is inevitable—Mr. Bush and his henchmen prove not quite as smart as they think they are.

The full responsibility for 9/11 is obviously shared by three administrations, possibly four.

But, Mr. Bush, if you are now trying to convince us by proxy that it’s all about the distractions of 1998 and 1999, then you will have to face a startling fact that your minions may have hidden from you.

The distractions of 1998 and 1999, Mr. Bush, were carefully manufactured, and lovingly executed, not by Bill Clinton, but by the same people who got you elected President.

Thus, instead of some commendable acknowledgment that you were even in office on 9/11 and the lost months before it, we have your sleazy and sloppy rewriting of history, designed by somebody who evidently read the Orwell playbook too quickly.

Thus, instead of some explanation for the inertia of your first eight months in office, we are told that you have kept us "safe" ever since—a statement that might range anywhere from zero, to 100 percent, true.

We have nothing but your word, and your word has long since ceased to mean anything.

And, of course, the one time you have ever given us specifics about what you have kept us safe from, Mr. Bush, you got the name of the supposedly targeted Tower in Los Angeles wrong.

Thus was it left for the previous president to say what so many of us have felt; what so many of us have given you a pass for in the months and even the years after the attack:

You did not try.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people.

Then, you blamed your predecessor.

That would be a textbook definition, Mr. Bush, of cowardice.

To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past.

That was one of the great mechanical realities Eric Blair—writing as George Orwell—gave us in the book “1984.”

The great philosophical reality he gave us, Mr. Bush, may sound as familiar to you, as it has lately begun to sound familiar to me.

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power...

"Power is not a means; it is an end.

"One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

"The object of persecution, is persecution. The object of torture, is torture. The object of power… is power."

Earlier last Friday afternoon, before the Fox ambush, speaking in the far different context of the closing session of his remarkable Global Initiative, Mr. Clinton quoted Abraham Lincoln’s State of the Union address from 1862.

"We must disenthrall ourselves."

Mr. Clinton did not quote the rest of Mr. Lincoln’s sentence.

He might well have.

"We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country."

And so has Mr. Clinton helped us to disenthrall ourselves, and perhaps enabled us, even at this late and bleak date, to save our country.

The "free pass" has been withdrawn, Mr. Bush.

You did not act to prevent 9/11.

We do not know what you have done to prevent another 9/11.

You have failed us—then leveraged that failure, to justify a purposeless war in Iraq which will have, all too soon, claimed more American lives than did 9/11.

You have failed us anew in Afghanistan.

And you have now tried to hide your failures, by blaming your predecessor.

And now you exploit your failure, to rationalize brazen torture which doesn’t work anyway; which only condemns our soldiers to water-boarding; which only humiliates our country further in the world; and which no true American would ever condone, let alone advocate.

And there it is, Mr. Bush:

Are yours the actions of a true American?

View the Video
Source:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15004160/
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Spy Agencies Say Iraq War
Worsens Terror Threat



By MARK MAZZETTI
September 24, 2006
New York Times


A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

More than a dozen United States government officials and outside experts were interviewed for this article, and all spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a classified intelligence document. The officials included employees of several government agencies, and both supporters and critics of the Bush administration. All of those interviewed had either seen the final version of the document or participated in the creation of earlier drafts.

These officials discussed some of the document’s general conclusions but not details, which remain highly classified.

Officials with knowledge of the intelligence estimate said it avoided specific judgments about the likelihood that terrorists would once again strike on United States soil. The relationship between the Iraq war and terrorism, and the question of whether the United States is safer, have been subjects of persistent debate since the war began in 2003.

National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue, and are approved by John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence. Their conclusions are based on analysis of raw intelligence collected by all of the spy agencies.

Analysts began working on the estimate in 2004, but it was not finalized until this year. Part of the reason was that some government officials were unhappy with the structure and focus of earlier versions of the document, according to officials involved in the discussion.

Previous drafts described actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, and some policy makers argued that the intelligence estimate should be more focused on specific steps to mitigate the terror threat. It is unclear whether the final draft of the intelligence estimate criticizes individual policies of the United States, but intelligence officials involved in preparing the document said its conclusions were not softened or massaged for political purposes.

Frederick Jones, a White House spokesman, said the White House “played no role in drafting or reviewing the judgments expressed in the National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism.”

The estimate’s judgments confirm some predictions of a National Intelligence Council report completed in January 2003, two months before the Iraq invasion. That report stated that the approaching war had the potential to increase support for political Islam worldwide and could increase support for some terrorist objectives.

Documents released by the White House timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks emphasized the successes that the United States had made in dismantling the top tier of Al Qaeda.

“Since the Sept. 11 attacks, America and its allies are safer, but we are not yet safe,” concludes one, a report titled “9/11 Five Years Later: Success and Challenges.” “We have done much to degrade Al Qaeda and its affiliates and to undercut the perceived legitimacy of terrorism.”

That document makes only passing mention of the impact the Iraq war has had on the global jihad movement. “The ongoing fight for freedom in Iraq has been twisted by terrorist propaganda as a rallying cry,” it states.

The report mentions the possibility that Islamic militants who fought in Iraq could return to their home countries, “exacerbating domestic conflicts or fomenting radical ideologies.”

On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee released a more ominous report about the terrorist threat. That assessment, based entirely on unclassified documents, details a growing jihad movement and says, “Al Qaeda leaders wait patiently for the right opportunity to attack.”

The new National Intelligence Estimate was overseen by David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats, who commissioned it in 2004 after he took up his post at the National Intelligence Council. Mr. Low declined to be interviewed for this article.

The estimate concludes that the radical Islamic movement has expanded from a core of Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of “self-generating” cells inspired by Al Qaeda’s leadership but without any direct connection to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants.

It also examines how the Internet has helped spread jihadist ideology, and how cyberspace has become a haven for terrorist operatives who no longer have geographical refuges in countries like Afghanistan.

In early 2005, the National Intelligence Council released a study concluding that Iraq had become the primary training ground for the next generation of terrorists, and that veterans of the Iraq war might ultimately overtake Al Qaeda’s current leadership in the constellation of the global jihad leadership.

But the new intelligence estimate is the first report since the war began to present a comprehensive picture about the trends in global terrorism.

In recent months, some senior American intelligence officials have offered glimpses into the estimate’s conclusions in public speeches.

“New jihadist networks and cells, sometimes united by little more than their anti-Western agendas, are increasingly likely to emerge,” said Gen. Michael V. Hayden, during a speech in San Antonio in April, the month that the new estimate was completed. “If this trend continues, threats to the U.S. at home and abroad will become more diverse and that could lead to increasing attacks worldwide,” said the general, who was then Mr. Negroponte’s top deputy and is now director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

For more than two years, there has been tension between the Bush administration and American spy agencies over the violence in Iraq and the prospects for a stable democracy in the country. Some intelligence officials have said the White House has consistently presented a more optimistic picture of the situation in Iraq than justified by intelligence reports from the field.

Spy agencies usually produce several national intelligence estimates each year on a variety of subjects. The most controversial of these in recent years was an October 2002 document assessing Iraq’s illicit weapons programs. Several government investigations have discredited that report, and the intelligence community is overhauling how it analyzes data, largely as a result of those investigations.

The broad judgments of the new intelligence estimate are consistent with assessments of global terrorist threats by American allies and independent terrorism experts.

The panel investigating the London terrorist bombings of July 2005 reported in May that the leaders of Britain’s domestic and international intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, “emphasized to the committee the growing scale of the Islamist terrorist threat.”

More recently, the Council on Global Terrorism, an independent research group of respected terrorism experts, assigned a grade of “D+” to United States efforts over the past five years to combat Islamic extremism.

The council concluded that “there is every sign that radicalization in the Muslim world is spreading rather than shrinking.”

Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/world/middleeast/24terror.html
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Before Sticking Your Foot in Your Mouth, Talk to Me


by Garrison Keillor
September 21, 2006
Baltimore Sun


I wish the pope had talked to me before he gave his "evil and inhuman" speech that got Muslims so testy at him. I could have told him, "Don't quote some old emperor's thoughts about Muslims unless you're willing to have people confuse his views with yours." You don't tell a Mormon, "My neighbor used to be Mormon and he says it's the weirdest religion since the Incas." He'll give you the hairy eyeball and go off to the temple and start converting your deceased ancestors.

If you're the holy pontiff, you should watch what you say, with the infallibility factor and all. You toss out an idea, and suddenly people are on their knees repeating it word for word. You'd think the pope has some peeps to tell him this. He can't just put on a pair of Ray-Bans and toss back an appletini and shoot the breeze as if he were Joe Blow from Kokomo. I could have told him that, had he asked.

My advantage is that I'm in Minnesota and it's September, there's a chill in the air, and this makes us smarter. Cold is a stimulant of intelligence. This has been shown time and time again.

If only Ford Motor Co. had spoken to me before admitting publicly that it expects to fall behind Toyota in the near future. The execs must be spending too much time at the beach. That's weenie talk. They should have said, "Market share is not what it's about for us. We know in our hearts that we are making the right cars for America at this time, and we will keep making them no matter how unpopular they are. In the end, we'll be proven right." Walk tall, Ford. Don't cry in the beer. That's my advice. Too bad you didn't ask.

I am an elder, after all, my boyish grin and insouciant manner notwithstanding. In other civilizations, I would sit cross-legged in my lodge and you people would approach me, bowing, and ask my counsel. You could do this anyway.

And that crazy Congressman John A. Boehner. He made a speech, asking whether Democrats are "more interested in protecting terrorists than in protecting the American people." He should have talked to me first. The U.S. House of Representatives, in which Mr. Boehner serves as majority leader, is not an institution held in high esteem these days, and before he chucks road apples at Democrats, he should tend to his own business.

The House took a five-week summer vacation, came back into session, debated the Abraham Lincoln Commemorative Coin Act, then spent four hours debating a bill to prohibit slaughtering horses for consumption - horse meat! In this country, horse meat is served only to carnivores in zoos, but various gasbags had to stand up and laud our equine friends, praise their role in the Western migration, the U.S. Cavalry, etc. Meanwhile the subjects of immigration, port security, terrorism and the war went unmentioned in the House chamber.

Commemorative coins!!?? The U.S. Mint is still producing pennies, though a penny costs more than a penny to produce (and a nickel costs more than a nickel), and people throw the coins away because they're worthless and a nuisance, and other people don't bend down to pick them up, despite the saying, "See a penny, pick it up, and the rest of the day you'll have good luck," and the Mint keeps cranking out more small change to replace those - it's deficit spending in action. It's foolishness on wheels.

Mr. Boehner's majority is helpless to solve this or to deal with the great issues of this country aside from whether to feed Trigger to the lions. And then he hauls off and accuses Democrats of treason.

You want to know what I think? Congress should leave town. Move north to where they can feel the crisp chill breeze of reality. Maybe a place in the middle of the country, along the Mississippi River. Let D.C. keep the Pentagon, the White House, the statuary, the vast marble and granite sheds of the federal bureaucracy, and move our nation's deliberative bodies to a place with a clearer view. There is plenty of land available along the Mississippi, rolling hills, woods, meadows. No need to spend money on a dome and pillars - just pitch two big circus tents, one for the House, one for the Senate, bring in FEMA trailers for housing, and let's see if we can't get more work out of these people.

Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.

Source:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0921-25.htm
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STRUGGLE TO CONFRONT THREE GLOBAL CHALLENGES - DEVELOPMENT, SECURITY, HUMAN RIGHTS


Kofi Annan's farewell speech at opening of 61st UN General Assembly



Kofi Annan
Sept. 19, 2006
United Nations



‘Together, International Community Has Pushed Some Big Rocks To Top of Mountain, Even If Others Have Slipped from Its Grasp and Rolled Back’

Following is the text of the address by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the General Assembly at the opening of the general debate of the sixty-first session:

When I first spoke to you from this podium, in 1997, it seemed to me that humanity faced three great challenges.

One was to ensure that globalization would benefit the human race as a whole, not only its more fortunate members.

Another was to heal the disorder of the post-cold war world, replacing it with a genuinely new world order of peace and freedom, as envisaged in our Charter.

And the third was to protect the rights and dignity of individuals, particularly women, which were so widely trampled underfoot.

As the second African to serve as Secretary-General, I felt that all three of these challenges –- the security challenge; the development challenge; the challenge of human rights and the rule of law -– concerned me directly

Africa was in great danger of being excluded from the benefits of globalization -– indeed, of being left to rot on the margins of the world economy.

Africa was also the scene of some of the most protracted and brutal conflicts.

And, many of Africa’s people felt they were unjustly condemned to be exploited and oppressed, generation after generation, since colonial rule had been replaced by an inequitable economic order on the global level, and sometimes by corrupt rulers and warlords at the local level.

In the decade since then, many people have been struggling to confront these three global challenges. Much has been achieved, but events have also presented us with new challenges –- or rather, have given the old ones new form, or a sharper bite.

In the economic arena, both globalization and growth have continued apace.

Some developing countries, notably in Asia, have played a major role in this growth. Many millions of their people have, thereby, been released from the prison of perpetual poverty.

Meanwhile, at the level of development policy, the debate has advanced, moving from rival models to agreed targets. And, the world has now recognized HIV/AIDS as a major challenge to development, and begun to confront it. I am proud of the role the United Nations has played in this. Development and the Millennium Development Goals now take pride of place in all our work.

But, let’s not delude ourselves. The Asian miracle is yet to be replicated in other parts of the world. And, even within the most dynamic Asian countries, its benefits are far from equally shared.

By the same token, the Millennium Goals are unlikely to be achieved everywhere by 2015.

True, in many developing countries there is now a much better understanding of what good governance is, and why it’s important. But, many still fall short of it in practice.

True, there is progress on debt relief, as well as encouraging promises on aid and investment. But, the “global partnership for development” is still more phrase than fact -– especially in the all-important area of trade.

My friends, globalization is not a tide that lifts all boats. Even among those who the statistics tell us are benefiting, many are deeply insecure, and strongly resent the apparent complacency of those more fortunate than themselves.

So, globalization, which in theory brings us all closer together, in practice, risks driving us further apart.

Are we any more secure against the second challenge –- the ravages of war?

Again, some statistics would tell us so. There are fewer inter-State conflicts than there used to be; and many civil wars have ended.

Here too, I am proud of the United Nations’ role in this. And, I am proud of what my fellow Africans have achieved in ending many of the conflicts that disfigured our continent.

But, here too, we should be under no illusion.

In far too many parts of the world –- especially the developing world –- people are still exposed to brutal conflicts, fought with small but deadly weapons.

And, people in all parts of the world are threatened -– though some are more aware of it than others –- by the spread of weapons of mass destruction. It is shameful that last year’s Summit Outcome does not contain even one word about non-proliferation and disarmament –- basically because States could not agree which of the two should be given priority. It is high time to end this dispute, and tackle both tasks with the urgency they demand.

Moreover, just as some who benefit from globalization may feel threatened by it, so many who are statistically safer from conflict do not feel safe.

For that, we have terrorism to thank. It kills and maims relatively few people, compared to other forms of violence and conflict. But, it spreads fear and insecurity. And that, in turn, drives people to huddle together with those who share their beliefs or their way of life, while shunning those who appear “alien”.

Thus, at the very time when international migration has brought millions of people of different creed or culture to live as fellow-citizens, the misconceptions and stereotypes underlying the idea of a “clash of civilizations” have come to be more and more widely shared; and insensitivity towards other people’s beliefs or sacred symbols -– intentional or otherwise -– is seized upon by those who seem eager to foment a new war of religion, this time on a global scale.

Moreover, this climate of fear and suspicion is constantly refuelled by the violence in the Middle East.

We might like to think of the Arab-Israeli conflict as just one regional conflict amongst many. But, it is not. No other conflict carries such a powerful symbolic and emotional charge among people far removed from the battlefield.

As long as the Palestinians live under occupation, exposed to daily frustration and humiliation; and, as long as Israelis are blown up in buses and in dance halls: so long will passions everywhere be inflamed.

On one side, supporters of Israel feel that it is harshly judged, by standards that are not applied to its enemies -– and too often this is true, particularly in some UN bodies.

On the other side, people are outraged by the disproportionate use of force against the Palestinians, and by Israel’s continued occupation and confiscation of Arab land.

As long as the Security Council is unable to end this conflict, and the now nearly 40-year-old occupation, by bringing both sides to accept and implement its resolutions, so long will respect for the United Nations continue to decline. So long, too, will our impartiality be questioned. So long will our best efforts to resolve other conflicts be resisted, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan, whose peoples need our help just as badly, and are entitled to it. And, so long will our devoted and courageous staff, instead of being protected by the blue flag, find themselves exposed to rage and violence, provoked by policies they neither control nor support.

But, what about the third great challenge facing humanity -– the challenge of the rule of law, and our rights and dignity as human beings? Here, too, there has been significant progress.

More rights have been enshrined in international treaties –- and this Assembly is now about to codify the rights of a group who particularly need it: people who suffer from handicaps and disabilities.

More Governments today are elected by, and are accountable to, those whom they govern.

Humanity has actually brought to justice some of those who committed the most heinous crimes against it.

And, this Assembly, meeting last year at the highest level, has solemnly proclaimed the responsibility -– of each individual State in the first instance, but, ultimately, of the whole international community, acting through the United Nations –- to “protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity”.

And yet. And yet.

Every day, reports reach us of new laws broken; of new bestial crimes to which individuals and minority groups are subjected.

Even the necessary and legitimate struggle around the world against terrorism is used as a pretext to abridge or abrogate fundamental human rights, thereby ceding moral ground to the terrorists and helping them find new recruits.

Sadly, once again the biggest challenge comes from Africa –- from Darfur, where the continued spectacle of men, women and children driven from their homes by murder, rape and the burning of their villages makes a mockery of our claim, as an international community, to shield people from the worst abuses.

In short, the events of the last 10 years have not resolved, but sharpened, the three great challenges I spoke of -– an unjust world economy, world disorder, and widespread contempt for human rights and the rule of law. As a result, we face a world whose divisions threaten the very notion of an international community, upon which this institution stands.

And, this is happening at the very time when, more than ever before, human beings throughout the world form a single society. So many of the challenges we face are global. They demand a global response, in which all peoples must play their part.

I deliberately say “all peoples”, echoing the preamble of our Charter, and not “all States”. It was clear to me 10 years ago, and is even clearer now, that international relations are not a matter of States alone. They are relations between peoples, in which so called “non-State actors” play a vital role, and can make a vital contribution. All must play their part in a true multilateral world order, with a renewed, dynamic United Nations at its centre.

Yes, I remain convinced that the only answer to this divided world must be a truly United Nations. Climate change, HIV/AIDS, fair trade, migration, human rights –- all these issues, and many more, bring us back to that point. Addressing each is indispensable for each of us in our village, in our neighbourhood, and in our country. Yet, each has acquired a global dimension that can only be reached by global action, agreed and coordinated through this most universal of institutions.

What matters is that the strong, as well as the weak, agree to be bound by the same rules, to treat each other with the same respect.

What matters is that all peoples accept the need to listen; to compromise; to take each other’s views into account.

What matters is that they come together, not at cross purposes but with a common purpose: a common purpose -- to shape their common destiny.

And, that can only happen if peoples are bound together by something more than just a global market, or even a set of global rules.

Each of us must share the pain of all who suffer, and the joy of all who hope, wherever in the world they may live.

Each of us must earn the trust of his fellow men and women, no matter what their race, colour or creed, and learn to trust them in turn.

That is what the founders of this Organization believed in. It is what I believe in. It is what the vast majority of people in this world want to believe in.

And, that is what has spurred the reforms and new ideas of the United Nations over the last frenetic decade. From peacekeeping to peacebuilding, from human rights to development and humanitarian relief, I have been lucky enough to preside over the Secretariat –- and its wonderful, devoted staff –- at a time when your ambitions for the Organization have sometimes seemed limitless –- although your pocketbooks less so.

These last few weeks, especially, as I travelled through the Middle East, I saw again the legitimacy and the reach of the United Nations. Its indispensable role in securing the peace in Lebanon has reminded us all how powerful this Organization can be, when everyone wants it to succeed.

This is the last time I shall have the honour of presenting my annual report to this Assembly. Let me conclude by thanking you all for allowing me to serve as Secretary-General during this remarkable decade.

Together, we have pushed some big rocks to the top of the mountain, even if others have slipped from our grasp and rolled back. But this mountain, with its bracing winds and global views, is the best place on earth to be.

It’s been difficult and challenging, but at times thrillingly rewarding. And, while I look forward to resting my shoulder from those stubborn rocks in the next phase of my life, I know I shall miss the mountain. Yes, I shall miss what is, when all is said and done, the world’s most exalting job. I yield my place to others with an obstinate feeling, a real obstinate feeling of hope for our common future.

Statements and Webcast
http://www.un.org/webcast/ga/61/gastatement19.shtml

Source:
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/sgsm10643.doc.htm
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“Lucky Larry” Silverstein


BY lifeforce@rockymountains.net
Sept. 6, 2006


You’ve got to be lucky to make $4 Billion killing on a 6-month investment of $124 Million

Larry Silverstein is the New York property tycoon who purchased the entire WTC complex just 6 months prior to the 9/11 attacks. That was the first time in its 33-year history the complex had EVER changed ownership.

Mr. Silverstein’s first order of business as the new owner was to change the company responsible for the security of the complex. The new security company he hired was Securacom (now Stratasec). George W. Bush's brother, Marvin Bush, was on its board of directors, and Marvin’s cousin, Wirt Walker III, was its CEO. According to public records, not only did Securacom provide electronic security for the World Trade Center, it also covered Dulles International Airport and United Airlines — two key players in the 9/11 attacks.

The company was backed by an investment firm, the Kuwait-American Corp., also linked for many years to the Bush family. KuwAm has been linked to the Bush family financially since the Gulf War. One of its principals and a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, Mishal Yousef Saud al Sabah, served on the board of Stratesec.

Now, consider: The members of a small cabal owned the WTC complex, controlled its electronic security, and also controlled the security not only for one of the airlines whose aircraft were hijacked on 9/11, but the airport from which they originated.

Another little “coincidence” -- Mr. Silversten, who made a down-payment of $124 million on this $3.2 billion complex, promptly insured it for $7 Billion. Not only that, he covered the complex against “terrorist attacks”.

Following the attacks, Silverstein filed TWO insurance claims for the maximum amount of the policy ($7B), based on the two -- in Silverstein's view -- separate attacks. The insurance company, Swiss Re, paid Mr. Silverstein $4.6 Billion — a princely return on a relatively paltry investment of $124 million.

There’s more. You see, the World Trade Towers were not the real estate plum we are led to believe. From an economic standpoint, the trade center -- subsidized since its inception by the NY Port Authority -- has never functioned, nor was it intended to function, unprotected in the rough-and-tumble real estate marketplace. How could Silverstein Group have been ignorant of this?

The towers required some $200 million in renovations and improvements, most of which related to removal and replacement of building materials declared to be health hazards in the years since the towers were built. It was well-known by the city of New York that the WTC was an asbestos bombshell. For years, the Port Authority treated the building like an aging dinosaur, attempting on several occasions to get permits to demolish the building for liability reasons, but being turned down due the known asbestos problem.

Further, it was well-known the only reason the building was still standing until 9/11 was because it was too costly to disassemble the twin towers floor by floor since the Port Authority was prohibited legally from demolishing the buildings.

The projected cost to disassemble the towers: $15 Billion. Just the scaffolding for the operation was estimated at $2.4 Billion!

In other words, the Twin Towers were condemned structures. How convenient that an unexpected “terrorist” attack demolished the buildings completely.

WTC Building 7 was a part of the WTC complex, and covered under the same insurance policy. This 47-storey steel-framed structure, which was NOT struck by an aircraft, mysteriously collapsed 8 hours later that same day into its own footprint at freefall speed — exactly in the manner of the Twin Towers.

How could this have happened? Mr. Silverstein gave the world the answer when he slipped up during a PBS television interview a year later, on 9/11/2002:

"I remember getting a call from the...er...fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse."

As anyone who knows anything about construction can tell you, “Pull” is common industry jargon for a controlled demolition.

One thing is for sure, the decision to 'pull' WTC 7 would have delighted many people. Especially because it has been reported that thousands of sensitive files relating to some of the biggest financial scams in history — including Enron and WorldCom -- were stored in the offices of some of the building’s tenants:

US Secret Service
NSA
CIA
IRS
BATF
SEC
NAIC Securities
Salomon Smith Barney
American Express Bank International
Standard Chartered Bank
Provident Financial Management
ITT Hartford Insurance Group
Federal Home Loan Bank

The Securities and Exchange Commission has not quantified the number of active cases in which substantial files were destroyed by the collapse of WTC 7. Reuters news service and the Los Angeles Times published reports estimating them at 3,000 to 4,000. They include the agency's major inquiry into the manner in which investment banks divvied up hot shares of initial public offerings during the high-tech boom. ..."Ongoing investigations at the New York SEC will be dramatically affected because so much of their work is paper-intensive," said Max Berger of New York's Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann. "This is a disaster for these cases."

Citigroup says some information that the committee is seeking [about WorldCom] was destroyed in the Sept. 11 terror attack on the World Trade Center. Salomon had offices in 7 World Trade Center. The bank says that back-up tapes of corporate emails from September 1998 through December 2000 were stored at the building and destroyed in the attack.

Inside WTC 7 was the US Secret Service's largest field office with more than 200 employees. "All the evidence that we stored at 7 World Trade, in all our cases, went down with the building," according to US Secret Service Special Agent David Curran.

What a neat, complete, and fortuitous turn of events was 9/11.

Incidentally, it’s worth noting that one of Lucky Larry’s closest friends — a person with whom it’s said he speaks almost daily by phone — is none other than former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

More on that cozy little relationship later...

Source:
http://tinyurl.com/ku8hg
______________________


The Controlled Demolition
of the World Trade Center
and "National Security Breach"



A material, 'legal deposition' and the real reasons for the destruction of the WTC and how neatly this demoliton fit into the coup of our government.


by Tom-Scott Gordon
July, 5, 2006

"The destruction of the World Trade Center, as witnessed on September 11th, 2001, was the result of an elaborately planned, Controlled Demolition."

This is the conclusion of thousands of witnesses and hundreds of forensics experts.

Given due consideration, these findings imply, that *US MILITARY* personnel are responsible for crimes that led to the murder of an estimated 3,000 innocent Americans.

As a living witness to these actions, as I have described herein, I do hereby officially charge those responsible, both for the execution, and for the '9/11 cover-up,' with the crimes of: Conspiracy, Treason, Genocide and Murder. Additional criminal charges also apply.

My sole objective in composing this document is to publicize the *initial phase* of this covert operation at the World Trade Center, dating back to 1989.

While I was employed by the WTC Architects of Record; Emery Roth and Associates, AIA, New York City, where I discovered both physical samples and written documentation concerning potential hazards with the physical integrity of the Twin Towers.

After witnessing these events, I publicly expressed my concern for a thorough public safety-inspection of the Twin Trade Towers, to other architects and contractors. clip..

This is an intense read.
http://redlineav.com/tsg.deposition.1.html
__________________________

9/11 Debate:
Loose Change Filmmakers vs.
Popular Mechanics Editors of
"Debunking 9/11 Myths"


September 11th, 2006


September 11, 2001 - five years after the attacks many people are asking questions about what happened on that day in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Websites, articles, books and documentaries have put forward a variety of alternate theories to the government's account of what happened. The most popular of these is a documentary called "Loose Change." Now, a book dealing with many of these theories has just been published by the magazine Popular Mechanics, it's called "Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts." In a Democracy Now! national broadcast exclusive, we host a debate between the filmmakers of Loose Change and the editors of Popular Mechanics on 9/11. [includes rush transcript] We continue with our 9/11 coverage today on this fifth anniversary of the attacks. Last week we heard from New Yorkers calling on the federal government to stop ignoring the health effects of the attacks on the World Trade Center. A major new study of 9/11 finds that nearly seven out of every ten first responders at Ground Zero now suffer from chronic lung ailments. We also spoke with a man whose brother was killed at the World Trade Center and is now spearheading a movement against President Bush's war on terror. And we looked at September 11th 100 years ago, when Gandhi launched Satyagraha, the modern non-violent resistance movement that continues to this day.

Today, a debate about 9/11. Ever since the attacks took place, many people across the country have raised a number of questions about what actually happened on that day in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Websites, articles, books and documentaries have put forward a variety of alternate theories to the government's account of what happened.

The most popular of these is a documentary called "Loose Change." The 80-minute film first appeared on the web in April 2005. Since then, it has had at least 10 million viewings and is described by Vanity Fair as "the first Internet blockbuster." As the popularity of "Loose Change" has soared, a book dealing with the questions it and others have raised about 9/11 has been published. It's called "Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts" put together by the editors of the magazine, Popular Mechanics.

Today, we talk about some of the 9/11 theories and the arguments against them.

* Dylan Avery, writer and director of "Loose Change."
* Jason Bermas, researcher for "Loose Change."
* James Meigs, editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics. Part of the editorial team that produced "Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts."
* David Dunbar, executive editor of Popular Mechanics. Part of the editorial team that produced "Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts."

TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: Today, we bring you a national exclusive: a debate about 9/11. Ever since the attacks took place, many people across the country have raised a number of questions about what actually happened on that day in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Websites, articles, books and documentaries have put forward a variety of alternate theories to the government's account of what happened. The most popular of these is a documentary called Loose Change. The 80-minute film first appeared on the web April 2005. Since then, it's had at least 10 million viewings and is described by Vanity Fair as “the first internet blockbuster.”

As the popularity of Loose Change has soared, a book dealing with the questions it and others have raised about 9/11 has been published. It’s called Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the Facts. It’s put together by the editors of the magazine Popular Mechanics.

So today, we'll talk about some of the theories and the arguments against them. We're joined in our studio by the filmmakers of Loose Change. Dylan Avery is the writer and director of the film and Jason Bermas is the film’s researcher. From Popular Mechanics, we're joined by David Dunbar, the executive editor of the magazine. He led the editorial team that produced Debunking 9/11 Myths. James Meigs is also with us, the magazine's editor-in-chief. Before we go to all of them, let's go to a clip of Loose Change that deals with the attacks on the Pentagon on 9/11.

NARRATOR: 10:06 a.m., Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Flight 93 was en route from Newark, New Jersey to California with 45 passengers when it went off course at 8:56 over northeastern Ohio. According to the official story, Flight 93 was en route to Washington, D.C., when it was overpowered by a group of passengers and crashed into an abandoned strip mine in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Out of all the events of 9/11, the one that has caused the most confusion is Flight 93: it was shot down/it wasn't shot down. However, evidence suggests that perhaps Flight 93 was nowhere near Shanksville.

FOX NEWS REPORTER: I wanna get quickly to Chris Chaniki. He's a photographer with the Pittsburgh affiliate, a FOX affiliate. He was back there just a couple of minutes ago. And Chris, I've seen the pictures. It looks like there’s nothing there, except for a hole in the ground.

CHRIS CHANIKI: Basically that's right. The only thing you could see from where we were was a big gouge in the earth and some broken trees. You could see some people working, walking around in the area. But from where we could see, there wasn't much left.

FOX NEWS REPORTER: Any large pieces of debris at all?

CHRIS CHANIKI: No. There was nothing, nothing that you could distinguish that a plane had crashed there.

FOX NEWS REPORTER: Smoke, fire?

CHRIS CHANIKI: Nothing. It was absolutely quiet. It was actually very quiet. Nothing going on down there. No smoke, no fire, just a couple of people walking around. They looked like part of the NTSB crew, walking around looking at the pieces.

FOX NEWS REPORTER: How big would you say that hole was?

CHRIS CHANIKI: From my estimates, I would guess it was probably about 20 to 15 feet long and probably about ten feet wide.

FOX NEWS REPORTER: What could you see on the ground, if anything, other than dirt and ash?

CHRIS CHANIKI: You couldn't see anything. You could just see dirt, ash and people walking around.

NARRATOR: Wally Miller, a Somerset County coroner: “It looked like somebody just dropped a bunch of metal out of the sky.” In the Washington Post: “It looked like someone took a scrap truck, dug a ten-foot ditch and dumped trash into it. And as for the passengers: “I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there were no bodies there.” In the Pittsburgh Review: “I have not to this day seen a single drop of blood, not a drop.” It would seem that on one day, for the second time in history, an entire plane along with its passengers disappeared upon impact.

AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt of Loose Change. We'll talk with the filmmakers, as well as the editors of Popular Mechanics, when we come back from break, and then we’ll take on the issue of what happened in Washington, the question of what hit the Pentagon. Stay with us.


AMY GOODMAN: As we take on the issue of what happened on September 11th, 2001, our guests are Dylan Avery, writer and director of Loose Change; Jason Bermas, researcher for the film; James Meigs is also with us, editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics; and David Dunbar, executive editor of Popular Mechanics, who led the editorial team that produced the book, Debunking 9/11 Myths. Jim Meigs, you’re the editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics; your response to this excerpt of Loose Change about what happened in Shanksville?

JAMES MEIGS: You know, that clip is really interesting, because it shows how slickly made this film is, how compelling it is at asking a series of sort of hanging questions and putting some spooky music behind it and making it sound as if someone’s covering up these facts. But a brave researcher can dig down and put all the pieces together. In fact, there's answers to all those questions.

If you look at the sources that were used throughout that clip, they’re all things that came up in the first day or two after the attacks. In some cases, somebody is standing across the field and saying, “I don't see a plane.” Well, when a plane strikes the ground at 500 miles an hour, flying almost straight down, there typically isn't much visible above ground.

They also quote the coroner in the Shanksville area. We talked to the coroner. He had the horrific job of collecting the body parts and cataloging and performing all the necessary tests. Those bodies were identified. The plane wreckage in the pieces -- the tiny pieces it was in after it had hit the ground was, you know, collected from the hole, cataloged.

And the black box was recovered. And we know what went on, because of the records of the voice cockpit recorder, and in this case, quite a few phone calls from the aircraft itself to various people on the ground. So we know a lot of what happened on Flight 93.

The film is alleging that no plane crashed there at all. The people were sent off somewhere to somehow be disposed of. If you are going to allege something so far beyond what a huge body of evidence would suggest is the truth, then you do need to pull together some evidence. And so, we fully support asking questions and being skeptical, but if you’re going to ask questions, you also have to look for the answers. And when you get answers, you can't ignore them.

AMY GOODMAN: James Bermas of Loose Change -- Jason Bermas.

JASON BERMAS: I'd just like to thank you for the opportunity to take on the government's lies and Popular Mechanics, which is a Hearst yellow journalism publication’s lies, as well. And I would just say, look for yourself. This is an open field, and for the first time in history, we have a crater and no plane there. Look at any other plane crash, and you’ll find a tail section, a wing section. There were reports that this actually was strewn out over eight miles, and we have videotape of smaller pieces of debris. The coroner speaks for himself. We have the Pittsburgh Gazette, the editor-in-chief there, saying, again, there’s nothing there that looks like a plane.

Again, don’t believe us. Go to seeloosechange.com right now and watch for free. But take a look. All those people -- you would normally have NTSB people in blue jackets to get the plane parts and put them back together. That's what happened with TWA-800 that was in the ocean. And you don’t have that. You have people in hazmat uniforms. Why? So all’s we’re saying is, look, there's no plane in this open field at all. There's a ten-foot crater by 16-foot, and there’s just smoke there. So where is this plane? That's all we're saying.

AMY GOODMAN: What about what the coroner said, collecting body parts?

JASON BERMAS: Well, he's never addressed us. And if you look at all of his media accounts in the days after, when he was first asked, again, he said there were no body parts, and to this day he has not seen a single drop of blood. So, again, I would say that's more reliable than, you know, four years after the fact being contacted.

JAMES MEIGS: Did you talk to him?

JASON BERMAS: He won't address us. Basically we have had people contact him, and he hangs up on us.

JAMES MEIGS: I find typically when we investigate these things, it's very easy to find public records, to find the reports from all the various agencies that have investigated these accidents. The transcripts of the voice cockpit recorder have been released. In many cases, again, the sources, Jason, those are -- newspaper articles are written day of, day after, a couple of days after.

DYLAN AVERY: No, one of them was a year after the fact.

JAMES MEIGS: Perhaps.

DYLAN AVERY: No, it was.

JAMES MEIGS: You know what it was like on those days, and you know how chaotic it was. You know how much misinformation typically comes out in the early hours of a major news event. Over time, with further research and good reporting, you can sift through those things, and you can make progress and get into the truth. Typically, what we see on conspiracy websites is citations that go back to the earliest moments, when the least information was available, and virtually no reference to the voluminous research which was done to follow up.

AMY GOODMAN: Dylan, what about the issue of cell phones?

DYLAN AVERY: The issue of cell phones is that for a majority of Flight 93’s flight, it was flying over cruising altitude, and a number of these -- now, a majority of the phone calls were coming from air phones. But the cell phone calls were coming from cruising altitude. Now, it is pretty much impossible in 2001 to sustain an extended conversation over a cell phone at cruising altitude from a commercial airliner. But, I mean, that's not our strongest evidence. I mean, that’s just one of the many things about that day that don't add up to us.

And we haven't gotten to hear the cockpit voice recorder. We haven't gotten to hear any of these alleged phone calls. I mean, the government is cherry-picking the evidence that it releases to the government. And I feel that if our government was truly attacked by surprise and we had absolutely no inclination of the attacks, they would not be so reticent to release the 84 videos from the Pentagon, the cockpit voice recorder of Flight 93. The list of things that the government is holding from us goes on.

AMY GOODMAN: David Dunbar.

DAVID DUNBAR: With regard to the cell phones, we did what any reporter would do. We talked to experts in the field. And, in fact, cell phones do work at that altitude, up to 35,000 feet and higher. And --

DYLAN AVERY: In 2001?

DAVID DUNBAR: In 2001, and it might be instructive for you to talk to some of the cell phone experts. There are a lot of dropped calls, because the plane is moving at high-speed and the hand-off sometimes get dropped. That’s true, and we know from the public record that, in fact, a lot of the cell phone calls were cut off. And most of the phone calls were made from the air phones. But nevertheless, talk to the experts, and you’ll find out that you can make a cell phone call from a commercial plane.

JASON BERMAS: If I may address that for one moment? If that's true, then why in 2004 did American Airlines spend tens of thousands of dollars to put cell phone towers in their planes so people could make those calls? Why spend tens of thousands of dollars three years after the fact, if they worked so well on September 11? What he's saying is a total lie.

AMY GOODMAN: James Meigs.

JAMES MEIGS: We didn't say they worked well. We said they worked. And if you look at the record, many of the calls were dropped, they were incomplete, but especially over rural areas. You know, if you think about a cell phone tower, it can cover a couple hundred square miles. That coverage area goes up into the sky, as well as horizontally across the ground.

DYLAN AVERY: Actually, they’re designed to point downward.

JAMES MEIGS: The reason that they’ve improved the system was to avoid the dropped calls and to isolate the cell phone transmissions from any possible interference with the avionics.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re not going to cover any issue comprehensively. We have a lot of issues to cover, and I'd like to turn now to an excerpt --

DYLAN AVERY: Yeah, the cell phone is a weak argument.

AMY GOODMAN: Why do you say that?

DYLAN AVERY: I mean, it's not our best evidence. I mean, there’s tons of things you can discuss besides the cell phone.

JASON BERMAS: Just the fact the plane is not there, I think, is our best evidence, and anyone can see that.

AMY GOODMAN: Let's turn to the Pentagon right now, in the excerpt of Loose Change that deals with the attack on the Pentagon.

JAMIE McINTYRE, Sr. Pentagon Correspondent: It might have appeared that way, but from my close-up inspection, there's no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon. The only site is the actual site of the building that's crashed in. And as I said, the only pieces left that you can see are small enough that you can pick up in your hand. There are no large tail sections, wing sections, fuselage, nothing like that anywhere around, which would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon.

NARRATOR: The official explanation is that the intense heat from the jet fuel vaporized the entire plane. Indeed, from these pictures it seems that there's absolutely no trace of a fully loaded Boeing 757. But if the fire was hot enough to incinerate a jumbo jet, then how could investigators identify 184 out of 189 people found at the Pentagon. The Armed Forces DNA identification laboratory, which was responsible for the task, was also responsible for identifying the dead in Shanksville. Keep that in mind for later.

So what is a Boeing 757 made of? The exact details are not public knowledge. But what we do know is that Flight 77 had two Rolls Royce RB211 engines, made of steel and titanium alloy, which are nine feet in diameter, 12 feet long and weigh six tons each. Titanium has a melting point of 1,688 degrees Celsius. Jet fuel is a hydrocarbon, which can maintain a constant temperature of 1,120 degrees Celsius after 40 minutes, but only if the fuel source is maintained. The fuel would have burned off immediately upon impact. Therefore, it is scientifically impossible that 12 tons of steel and titanium was vaporized by jet fuel.

AMY GOODMAN: Dylan Avery, the narrator and filmmaker of Loose Change, a film that is getting tremendous attention. Millions of people have downloaded it. Dylan and Jason are here in New York in this weekend of the anniversary giving out thousands of copies of the film. The issue of the Pentagon, David Dunbar, executive editor of Popular Mechanics?

DAVID DUNBAR: Well, the clip starts with a red herring, claiming that experts say the plane was vaporized, which is untrue. And in addition, in our book and I believe even in the film, there is evidence of debris on the lawn of the Pentagon. There's plenty of debris that's been found inside the building. There were -- the largest chunk was probably the landing gear that punched through the C-ring to make that 16-foot exit hole. So there's plenty of physical evidence, including the flight data recorder and forensics that were done, that there was a 757 that struck the Pentagon. And I'm still waiting, after five years, to see any physical evidence of any kind that would indicate that it was a missile or anything else that hit the Pentagon.

AMY GOODMAN: Dylan Avery.

DYLAN AVERY: Well, I mean, we've been waiting five years to see clear video of what actually happened at the Pentagon. And you guys are coming on and saying that you’re experts on the fact, when nobody has seen what has happened. You guys claim to have seen photographs that have been released just to you. And I want to know why those haven't been released to the public.

AMY GOODMAN: What photographs have you seen?

DAVID DUNBAR: Can I add a point about that? I am not coming on this show and presenting myself as an expert in metallurgy or structural engineering. I'm coming on the show as the editor of this book. And what do we do? We do what you would do, Amy, or any other journalist would do. We talk to people who are experts in the field. And that's what we did with this book in order to debunk these 9/11 myths. I highly recommend it for documentary filmmakers or anybody else who wants to look at the data. That’s what we did. We talked to people who were there at the scene. We talked to structural engineers. We talked to aviation crash experts.

AMY GOODMAN: Jason Berman.

JASON BERMAS: Ms. Goodman, I'd just like to address the fact that they have claimed that they have 84 videos through a FOIA request pertaining to what did strike the Pentagon. But the bottom line is, nothing should have struck the Pentagon. We know through the 9/11 Commission testimony that Norman Mineta, the head of the Transportation Department, was in a bunker with Cheney prior to the Pentagon strike. Now, this is the only three-and-a-half minutes out of the hundreds of hours that’s been censored by C-SPAN. Why? Because he says he's in a bunker with Cheney, and an aide walks in and says, “Sir, the plane is 50 miles out. Sir, the plane is 30 miles out. Do the orders still stand?” Cheney snaps his head around and says, “Of course, the orders still stand.”

By the time it was ten miles out, it was too late, and the Pentagon was struck. That is a direct stand down order. And if you listen to the NORAD tapes, later on some of these people are actually tracking these planes, asking to shoot them down, and they’re getting a negative shoot-down order. Why is that significant? Well, in June of 2001, Cheney signs a DOD memo putting shoot-down orders in his hands, Rumsfeld' hands and Bush's hands alone, where it was standard operating procedure if colonels were to intercept these planes and they saw a threat, they could do the shoot-down order.

JAMES MEIGS: Let's back up a little bit.

AMY GOODMAN: Jim Meigs of Popular Mechanics.

JAMES MEIGS: We started talking about physical evidence for an aircraft hitting the Pentagon, that an aircraft was seen by hundreds of people, eyewitnesses. The wreckage was removed from the Pentagon. The bodies were removed from the Pentagon and identified. None of those people have materialized to explain that this was a conspiracy.

We're not a political magazine. We're about facts. We're about what happens when airplanes crash, how buildings are built, and so we're not going back to conspiracies that might have been hatched, you know, during the Kennedy administration or other eras, but we are looking for physical evidence, positive evidence for any of these claims. Every time we get into detail on one, they fall apart.

The stand-down order is a good example. If you look at the NORAD tapes -- and Vanity Fair, the same magazine that did a very laudatory story on you guys, has a story in their current issue that includes these tapes. And what you see is it was total chaos that day. Nobody knew where the planes were. It was complete disorganization, and the protocol for how to handle a commercial aircraft that was off course was a complete mess. And, in fact, I think on September 10th, 2001, most of us would have been horrified to think that the minute a commercial aircraft goes off course there would be an F-16 on our trail with sidewinder missiles. That was not a country, I think, many of us would want to live in.

AMY GOODMAN: Jason Bermas

JASON BERMAS: What Mr. Meigs doesn't want to address is that that article clearly states that the same kind of thing were happening in the drills as what was happening on September 11th. You have comments like, "I've never seen so much real world stuff," during an exercise. You have somebody following Flight 11 for 20 minutes after it's hit the World Trade Center, and then you have Cynthia McKinney twice asking for reports on these drills, the last time in a 2005 Department of Defense budget thing from Myers and Rumsfeld, and she never gets it. And she asked them, "Well, do these war games help or hurt us?" And Richard Myers actually said, "They helped our response on 9/11," which is total nonsense.

We know at 8:45 in the morning, the CIA at the NRO building is running a drill of ramming a plane into a building. We know that FEMA was here the night before in New York City for a bio-terror drill. We also know the FAA is running drills of 20-plus hijacked jets going in and out of radar at the same exact time these four hijackings are happening. That's what he doesn't want to tell you.

DYLAN AVERY: I also want to jump in. We still have not seen any pictures of two RB211 engines, the tail section, any of that. We have not seen any significant parts of debris. And I would like to know what sources you have that the landing gear created that punch-out hole, because I have heard completely different responses. I heard the fuselage is what caused that hole.

JAMES MEIGS: There's a photo of it.

DYLAN AVERY: There's a photo of the landing gear causing that 16-foot hole?

JAMES MEIGS: There's -- you know, one of the things that you can do, the Pentagon and a number of other engineering organizations did intensive studies of what happened at the building. The building is a reinforced concrete building. The aircraft was shredded into relatively small pieces. The heavier -- some of the heavier components traveled farther, including the landing gear. You don't find an intact tail section when a large commercial aircraft hits a reinforced concrete building at 500 miles an hour. This is not a movie.

AMY GOODMAN: I do want to go to another clip of the movie, though, of the film. I want to turn to Loose Change, the part that does deal with the damage to the Pentagon. It begins with a clip of CNN's coverage on 9/11.

NARRATOR: These photos were taken before the roof of the outer ring had collapsed. The only visible damage to the outer wall is a single hole no more than 16 feet in diameter. A Boeing 757 is 155 feet long, 44 feet high, has 124-foot wingspan and weighs almost 100 tons. Are we supposed to believe that it disappeared into this hole without leaving any wreckage on the outside? Why is there no damage from where the wings or the vertical stabilizer or the engines would have slammed into the building?

Remember how big the engines were? If six tons of steel and titanium slammed into the Pentagon at 530 miles per hour, they would bury themselves inside the building leaving two very distinct imprints. And yet the only damage to the outer wall is this single hole with no damage from where the engines would have hit. Why are the windows next to the hole completely intact? Why are the cable spools in front of the hole unmoved?

As to the inside of the Pentagon, there's another hole approximately 16 feet in diameter found on the other side of the C-ring, three rings from the impact? For that hole to have been caused by Flight 77, the Boeing would have had to smash through nine feet of steel-reinforced concrete, traveling 310 feet. The nose of a commercial airliner is composed of lightweight carbon. This is what usually happens to the nose of a commercial airliner in a plane crash. If the nose caused this hole, where is the rest of the debris from the plane? So, what could blow a 16-foot hole on the outer ring of the Pentagon, smash through three rings, nine feet of steel-reinforced concrete and leave another 16-foot hole? A 757? Or a cruise missile?

AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt of Loose Change. David Dunbar, executive editor of Popular Mechanics, your response?

DAVID DUNBAR: We just looked at the physical evidence, and when the filmmakers can present some evidence of a cruise missile striking the Pentagon, we'll be happy to look at it and evaluate it and talk to our experts. Just rolling the tape back a bit, the angle that the film shows of the facade of the Pentagon before it collapsed is a misleading picture. That gash in the E-ring was about 90 feet across.

DYLAN AVERY: No, it was not.

DAVID DUNBAR: The wingspan of the plane was about 124 and change, not loose change, but that punched the hole into the building. And then the landing gear was more dense and heavier and continued on through a forest of columns to smash that exit ring. So when you see that nice round hole, that's the exit ring in -- that's the exit hole in the C-ring punched by the landing gear. And Purdue University did a massive computer reenactment of the crash and the aftermath, and they worked with the American Society of Civil Engineers to preparation of their report, and it's conclusive that the plane did strike the Pentagon.

AMY GOODMAN: Dylan Avery.

DYLAN AVERY: The initial impact on the Pentagon was no more than 20 feet wide, and if you are telling me that initial round impact hole in the facade of the Pentagon is 90 feet, then you're telling me that the two windows above it are 30 feet across.

DAVID DUNBAR: And incidentally, about the windows, I'm glad you mentioned that. Those were recently replaced in the Pentagon as part of a whole renovation program designed specifically to be blast resistant after the explosions at the American embassies in East Africa.

DYLAN AVERY: I find it very convenient that Hani Hanjour decided to choose that one particular section of the Pentagon to hit, when he could have just dove straight right into the front door.

DAVID DUNBAR: In the world of paranoid conspiracy theories --

DYLAN AVERY: You're not addressing the evidence.

DAVID DUNBAR: --there are no coincidences.

DYLAN AVERY: You're not addressing the evidence.

JASON BERMAS: I would just like to say this.

AMY GOODMAN: Jason Bermas.

JASON BERMAS: The first official version was this thing bounced off the lawn and hit it, and it would appear that it would have to, because it's such a low-level hit. Okay, it didn't bounce off the lawn, because there's no scratches on the lawn. On top of that, we actually interviewed the first person on the scene before the collapse, and he was on the lawn taking video of it for twelve minutes. His name is Bob Pugh, and it is no more than a 16- to 20-foot hole. And we actually have one of the survivors who crawled out of that hole and said she saw no plane debris. Her name is April Gallup. Explain to me how a woman can come through a hole where a 757 has just impacted the building.

AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds, Jim Meigs.

JAMES MEIGS: Yeah. We didn't fact check every detail of Loose Change, but what we did do was look at the broad cross-section of conspiracy theories. There are photographs of the plane in the building of wreckage wrapped around reinforced concrete columns, and there is a map of the path of destruction that plane tore through that area.

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to go a break. We want to get to the World Trade Center. We are talking with the editors of Popular Mechanics and the filmmakers who made the film Loose Change. Stay with us.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to another theory put forward by the film Loose Change, is that the fire caused by the airplane crashes wasn't actually hot enough to melt steel and cause the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center to collapse.

NARRATOR: Hyman Brown, civil engineering professor and the World Trade Center's construction manager: “It was over-designed to withstand almost anything, including hurricanes, high winds, bombings and an airplane hitting it. Although the buildings were designed to withstand 150-year storm and the impact of a Boeing 707, jet fuel burning at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit weakened the steel.”

Kevin Ryan, Underwriters Laboratories in a letter to Frank Gayle of the National Institute of Standards and Technology: “We know that the steel components were certified to ASTM E119. The time temperature curves for this standard require the samples to be exposed to temperatures around 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for several hours. And as we all agree, the steel applied met those specifications. Additionally, I think we can all agree that even unfireproof steel will not melt until reaching red-hot temperatures of nearly 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Why Dr. Brown would imply that 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit would melt the high-grade steel used in those buildings makes no sense at all. This story just does not add up. If steel from those buildings did soften or melt, I'm sure we can all agree, that this was certainly not due to jet fuel fires of any kind, let alone the briefly burning fires in those towers.”

Ryan's statements directly contradict statements from other experts claiming that 2,000-degree heat inside the World Trade Center caused the towers to collapse. As such, days after writing this letter, Kevin Ryan was fired from his position. Not even the experts agree with each other. So what else could have caused the Twin Towers and Building Seven to collapse?

PETER JENNINGS: 10:00 Eastern Time this morning, just collapsing on itself…

DON DAHLER: The second building that was hit by the plane has just completely collapsed.

PETER JENNINGS: We have no idea what caused this.

CNN ANCHOR: Almost looks like one of those planned implosions.

CHANNEL 8 REPORTER: As if a demolition team set off, when you see the old demolitions of these old buildings. It folded down on itself and it is not there anymore.

PETER JENNINGS: If you wish to bring -- anybody who has ever watched a building being demolished on purpose knows that if you are going to do this, you have to get at the under-infrastructure of a building and bring it down.

WITNESS: We heard another explosion, and I’m assuming that's the one that came from the lower level, since there were two.

INTERVIEWER: Right, because it was like 18 minutes apart.

WITNESS: Well, this is -- no, the first explosion. Then there was a second explosion in the same building. There were two explosions.

INTERVIEWER: Okay.

WITNESS 2: Federal agencies that were down there do believe that there was some sort of explosive device somewhere else besides the planes hitting.

NBC ANCHOR: NBC’s Pat Dawson is close to the scene of that attack. Pat?

PAT DAWSON: Just moments ago, I spoke to the Chief of Safety for the New York City Fire Department. The chief, Albert Turi, he received word of the possibility of a secondary device, that is, another bomb going off. He tried to get his men out as quickly as he could. But he said that there was another explosion, which took place. And then an hour after the first hit here, the first crash that took place, he said there was another explosion that took place in one of the towers here. He thinks that there were actually devices that were planted in the building. The second device, he thinks, he speculates, was probably planted in the building.

AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt of the film Loose Change. And as we broadcast today at this time in the live broadcast, it's the time of the first plane hitting the first tower of the World Trade Center. Jim Meigs, the editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics, your response to this aspect in Loose Change?

JAMES MEIGS: Yeah, well, that clip is interesting. It’s built largely around the testimony of a guy named Kevin Ryan from Underwriters Laboratories. In fact, it turns out his expertise was testing water. He wasn't involved in steel at all. This fact has been widely known, and yet for quite some time -- and even a lot of other conspiracy theorists have backed away from that, and yet it's in the film. And it looks so convincing when you see it, if you don't take the time to go back and do the background research. And if you notice, so many of the clips in that section come from the day of, the day after.

And it ends -- or along the way, don't they say something like, even the experts don't agree? In fact, the experts do agree. The collapse of the World Trade Center is the most intensively studied engineering failure in world history, and thousands of pages of reports, experts, some affiliated with various branches of government, major engineering schools, there's no indication in any of that work to support any of these ideas of demolition or anything like that. And the things that are cited tend to be the experts who on close investigation turn out to have no expertise or first impressions of people on the scene who, of course, heard all kinds of horrible noises and confusing, terrible things in the chaos of that day.

AMY GOODMAN: Jason Bermas.

DYLAN AVERY: Well, real quick, I just want to jump in and say, Kevin Ryan has been open about his statement. He has always been public about the fact that he worked for the -- I don’t remember the exact name, but it was a subdivision of Underwriters Laboratories, which did water testing. But it was the fact that he got the higher-up from -- he got the word from his higher-ups that they actually had certified the steel and, I mean, his science still adds up.

DAVID DUNBAR: In fact, Underwriter Laboratories does not certify structural steel.

DYLAN AVERY: Oh, okay.

JASON BERMAS: I would disagree with that. But aside from the hundreds of witnesses’ accounts of bombs going off in the building, I would just like to go to the official version. They are saying that the intense heat from the impact holes was so intense that it weakened the steel, causing it to do a pancake collapse on top of itself. This is simply a lie. We know two minutes before the first building, which was struck second and burned for less time, we had firefighters in the impact zone saying that they could knock down the fires with two lines, two hand lines. Now, I ask you, can human beings stand in 1,500-degree temperature, 1,200-degree temperature, 600-degree temperature? The answer is: no, they cannot.

JAMES MEIGS: Jason, I think it's telling that every time you disagree with something you call the people a liar.

JASON BERMAS: I'm not calling anybody a liar, sir. I'm calling you a liar, because you are a liar. These people were not lying. They knew they could knock down this fire. They radioed down. They said they could knock it down with two hand lines and literally less than two minutes later, the building imploded on itself. And what you won’t see in the clip there, but you can see at seeloosechange.com, again, for free, are the isolated blast points, 20, 40, and 60 floors below the supposed pancake collapse. And these are blast points. These are not pressure coming from air. And doubt me, because if you watch the first plane hitting the building, the only video of it, you actually see one of these blast points go off 20 stories above that impact, and they try to say that the building is blown out on the bottom level, first floor, right? First of all, the World Trade Center goes into the Port Authority. So why did it go 1,300 feet down the elevator shafts, explode -- decide to explode in the bottom level, leave no fire marks. I mean, it literally knocked off 15-foot panels --

DYLAN AVERY: I would also --

JASON BERMAS: -- of marble and left no burn marks. Marble, when you put fire on it, begins to turn yellow and brown rapidly. Look at the video evidence.

AMY GOODMAN: Dylan Avery?

DYLAN AVERY: I would just like to quickly jump in and ask what your guys’ explanation is for Willie Rodriguez's testimony that he heard, experienced, and his co-workers were actually burned, by an explosion in the basement of the North Tower, prior to the plane hitting? And this has been verified by at least twenty different eyewitnesses.

AMY GOODMAN: Jim Meigs, of Popular Mechanics.

JAMES MEIGS: The -- when the planes struck the buildings, they penetrated the internal core. Jet fuel poured down stairwells and elevator shafts, setting off secondary explosions, not to mention the horrific impact of these fully loaded planes hitting the structure and causing enormous swaying.

DYLAN AVERY: Mr. Meigs --

JAMES MEIGS: Give me a second to finish, Dylan. It's interesting, in that testimony, he says that somebody came out of the elevator area with his skin hanging off. That would be consistent with a fire, not an explosion. And you had a short clip of Naudet brothers’ documentary about that day and of them entering the lobby, but what you didn’t have was their voiceover, where they say they saw humans on fire, which again would be completely consistent with what we saw in all the reports on this, that jet fuel came down the elevator shafts. People died. We're talking about real human beings here, you know. This wasn't a movie. This isn’t a parlor game.

JASON BERMAS: We are talking about real human beings --

DYLAN AVERY: Bermas, Bermas, relax for a second.

JASON BERMAS: -- and we respect them with the truth, sir.

DYLAN AVERY: Relax for a second.

DAVID DUNBAR: It’s interesting to note, too, that --

DYLAN AVERY: But you still didn’t address the fact that it was before.

DAVID DUNBAR: -- conspiracy theorists sometimes cite the Empire State Building crash back in 1945: that building’s still standing, why are the Twin Towers down? But what’s interesting about that 1945 crash -- it was a much smaller plane going at a much lower speed -- it had similarities in terms of the fuel pouring down the elevator shafts and stairwells and, in fact, igniting fires in the lobby of the Empire State Building.

JASON BERMAS: Sir, hold on. True or false: the claim is that this fuel knocked the fireproofing off all the steel, correct? That's the claim?

DAVID DUNBAR: No, nobody’s claiming it knocked it off all the steel. It knocked it off approximately 60,000 square feet.

JASON BERMAS: Well, that’s false.

JAMES MEIGS: The impact, the impact.

DAVID DUNBAR: The impact. The impact of the plane.

JASON BERMAS: Another lie.

DAVID DUNBAR: [inaudible] through the impact [inaudible].

AMY GOODMAN: Now, we only have a few minutes, and I want to get to Building Seven. Dylan Avery what is your thesis of what happened to Building Seven?

DYLAN AVERY: Sure. Well, basically, which is -- this is one thing that a lot of people don't know about September 11th, myself included, until I started doing the research. At 5:20 p.m. on September 11th, World Trade Center Building Seven -- it was a 47-story steel-frame skyscraper 300 feet to the north of the North Tower -- at 5:20 p.m. this building collapses in under seven seconds completely into its own footprint into a debris pile about six or seven stories high. Now, it wasn't hit by a plane. It was hit by debris from the North Tower when it fell. But, if you look at all the buildings surrounding the World Trade Center, and if you actually look at Building Five, which is right underneath both the Twin Towers, that building is engulfed in flames for hours after Building Seven even collapses.

So, we have all the buildings surrounding the Twin Towers heavily engulfed with debris, some engulfed in flames. We have World Trade Center Building Seven, which has isolated fires on floor seven and twelve. It has smoke coming from its south face, and these guys claim that 25% of the building was scooped out. Even if 25% of the bottom of the building was scooped out, that still does not account for the building falling in perfect freefall into --

AMY GOODMAN: And your thesis about what happened? What do you believe?

DYLAN AVERY: It would have had to have been a controlled demolition. That's the only way to prove -- that’s the only way to explain what we saw with our own eyes, and any attempts to discredit that are just not scientifically sound.

JAMES MEIGS: You know, this is a wonderful example of how conspiracy theories work. Any time there’s a little bit of doubt, a little bit of area where we don't know everything, then the answer immediately is, well, someone must have blown it up. It’s a form of argumentation that’s also used by creationists. If they can find one little gap in the evolutionary record, they say evolution’s a hoax. Or Holocaust deniers --

DYLAN AVERY: Mr. Meigs, with all do respect, these are two completely different things.

JAMES MEIGS: Holocaust denial works with very similar --

DYLAN AVERY: Oh, my God!

JASON BERMAS: Oh, man!

JAMES MEIGS: And, but what we see here is -- one of our sources was Vincent Dunn, the retired deputy fire chief for the New York City Fire Department, who wrote the textbook, The Collapse of Burning Buildings. And what he explained is that the building was extremely unconventional. It had this giant Con Ed substation with enormous trusses carrying extraordinarily high loads, very vulnerable to fire and other kinds of damage. It was not a conventional skyscraper by a long shot. Those fires burned unfought for seven hours, fed by diesel tanks that were in the building to fuel backup generators. And when those trusses ultimately failed, the building did collapse in its own footprint. That's what happens when a building's internal supports fail.

AMY GOODMAN: We only have about one minute and we have to divide it. Can you respond to that point and make your larger point?

JASON BERMAS: Please let me respond to that.

DYLAN AVERY: Go ahead, Bermas.

JASON BERMAS: On top of everything he said, that’s where everybody rushed to for the local government, okay? We have somebody who was on the 23rd floor, okay, working with the local government, being escorted by fire fighters. He gets down to the eighth floor, huge explosion in Building Seven. Bomb goes off. Okay, this is his words, not mine: “Why are there explosives in Building Seven.” On top of that, there have been five different reasons why it fell. They’re trying to say generators, there was a big fuel tank, there’s a 20-story thing scooped out of the building, all of which is false, because they don’t know.

DYLAN AVERY: They keep changing their explanations for why the building fell.

JASON BERMAS: And I would say this, the 9/11 Commission Report actually has the nerve in a footnote to say that it collapsed in 18 seconds. Look for yourself and time it. It’s no more than 7 seconds.

AMY GOODMAN: And who do you believe blew up Building Seven?

DYLAN AVERY: We don’t want to try to implicate anybody. We’re just trying to tell people to go out and research for themselves. But, I mean, you have to ask yourself, who could have possibly placed explosives inside Word Trade Center Building Seven, secretly without anyone noticing, and especially the Twin Towers?

JASON BERMAS: Especially because the CIA, the DOD, the Secret Service are all located there.

DYLAN AVERY: Yeah, I mean, that building was a government hotspot.

AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds, Jim Meigs.

JAMES MEIGS: You know, conspiracies have a way of constantly expanding. You just listed a whole range of government agencies. Apparently the fire fighters we talked to, we at Popular Mechanics, other journalists, our friend David Corn at The Nation is accused to being part of this massive cover-up. The fact is, there are always little details that don't always add up until you finish your research.

DYLAN AVERY: Mr. Meigs, you’re still not addressing the evidence.

JAMES MEIGS: But when you really dig down, every single one of these has a clear explanation. And if there's areas that don't, let's continue to dig. We should be skeptical. We should ask questions. By all means, we fully support the effort to get to the bottom of any remaining questions.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there. David Dunbar and Jim Meigs of Popular Mechanics, and Jason Bermas and Dylan Avery of Loose Change, I want to thank you all for being with us.

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