Matti Tabbi covered my opinions on this and all the 9/11 conspiracy nonsense in his excellent article in Rolling Stone called "I, Left Gatekeeper".
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1001-24.htm
I especially love his imaginary meeting between Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld:
Quote:
BUSH: So, what's the plan again?
CHENEY: Well, we need to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. So what we've decided to do is crash a whole bunch of remote-controlled
planes into Wall Street and the Pentagon, say they're real hijacked commercial planes, and blame it on the towelheads; then we'll
just blow up the buildings ourselves to make sure they actually fall down.
RUMSFELD: Right! And we'll make sure that some of the hijackers are agents of Saddam Hussein! That way we'll have no problem
getting the public to buy the invasion.
CHENEY: No, Dick, we won't.
RUMSFELD: We won't?
CHENEY: No, that's too obvious. We'll make the hijackers Al Qaeda and then just imply a connection to Iraq.
RUMSFELD: But if we're just making up the whole thing, why not just put Saddam's fingerprints on the attack?
CHENEY: (sighing) It just has to be this way, Dick. Ups the ante, as it were. This way, we're not insulated if things go wrong in Iraq.
Gives us incentive to get the invasion right the first time around.
BUSH: I'm a total idiot who can barely read, so I'll buy that. But I've got a question. Why do we need to crash planes into the Towers
at all? Since everyone knows terrorists already tried to blow up that building complex from the ground up once, why don't we just
blow it up like we plan to anyway, and blame the bombs on the terrorists?
RUMSFELD: Mr. President, you don't understand. It's much better to sneak into the buildings ourselves in the days before the attacks,
plant the bombs and then make it look like it was exploding planes that brought the buildings down. That way, we involve more
people in the plot, stand a much greater chance of being exposed and needlessly complicate everything!
CHENEY: Of course, just toppling the Twin Towers will never be enough. No one would give us the war mandate we need if we just
blow up the Towers. Clearly, we also need to shoot a missile at a small corner of the Pentagon to create a mightily underpublicized
additional symbol of international terrorism -- and then, obviously, we need to fake a plane crash in the middle of f*****g nowhere in
rural Pennsylvania.
RUMSFELD: Yeah, it goes without saying that the level of public outrage will not be sufficient without that crash in the middle of
f*****g nowhere.
CHENEY: And the Pentagon crash -- we'll have to do it in broad daylight and say it was a plane, even though it'll really be a cruise
missile.
BUSH: Wait, why do we have to use a missile?
CHENEY: Because it's much easier to shoot a missile and say it was a plane. It's not easy to steer a real passenger plane into the
Pentagon. Planes are hard to come by.
BUSH: But aren't we using two planes for the Twin Towers?
CHENEY: Mr. President, you're missing the point. With the Pentagon, we use a missile, and say it was a plane.
BUSH: Right, but I'm saying, why don't we just use a plane and say it was a plane? We'll be doing that with the Twin Towers, right?
CHENEY: Right, but in this case, we use a missile. (Throws hands up in frustration) Don, can you help me out here?
RUMSFELD: Mr. President, in Washington, we use a missile because it's sneakier that way. Using an actual plane would be too
obvious, even though we'll be doing just that in New York.
BUSH: Oh, OK.
RUMSFELD: The other good thing about saying that it was a passenger jet is that that way, we have to invent a few hundred fictional
victims and account for a nonexistent missing crew and plane. It's always better when you leave more cover story to invent, more
legwork to do and more possible holes to investigate. Doubt, legwork and possible exposure -- you can't pull off any good conspiracy
without them.
BUSH: You guys are brilliant! Because if there's one thing about Americans -- they won't let a president go to war without a damn
good reason. How could we ever get the media, the corporate world and our military to endorse an invasion of a secular Iraqi state
unless we faked an attack against New York at the hands of a bunch of Saudi religious radicals? Why, they'd never buy it. Look at
how hard it was to get us into Vietnam, Iraq the last time, Kosovo?
CHENEY: Like pulling teeth!
RUMSFELD: Well, I'm sold on the idea. Let's call the Joint Chiefs, the FAA, the New York and Washington, D.C., fire departments,
Rudy Giuliani, all three networks, the families of a thousand fictional airline victims, MI5, the FBI, FEMA, the NYPD, Larry Eagleburger,
Osama bin Laden, Noam Chomsky and the fifty thousand other people we'll need to pull this off. There isn't a moment to lose!
BUSH: Don't forget to call all of those Wall Street hotshots who donated $100 million to our last campaign. They'll be thrilled to know
that we'll be targeting them for execution as part of our thousand-tentacled modern-day bonehead Reichstag scheme! After all, if
we're going to make martyrs -- why not make them out of our campaign paymasters? s**t, didn't the Merrill Lynch guys say they
needed a refurbishing in their New York offices?
RUMSFELD: Oh, they'll get a refurbishing, all right. Just in time for the "Big Wedding"!
ALL THREE: (cackling) Mwah-hah-hah!
_________________
If you're going to argue with someone, you should first walk a mile in their shoes.
That way, when it's time to argue, you're a mile away. And you have their shoes.
25 Jul 2007, 1:50 am
