Not mentioned:
American Helicopter Crashes in Afghanistan

A large U.S. military helicopter crashed Tuesday afternoon while carrying at least 16 American troops to reinforce a counterterrorism mission in eastern Afghanistan, U.S. officials confirmed. The fate of those on board was not immediately known, and the area of the crash was rugged and hilly.
Afghan officials said the CH-47 Chinook helicopter was hit by a rocket while flying over Konar province, near the Pakistani border. A purported spokesman for the Taliban Islamic militia asserted responsibility for the attack.

Posted by: b | Jun 29 2005 4:49 utc | 4

The above was me…
Germany Engineers help America
Explains what happened on 9-11-2001 from their perspective…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 29 2005 5:08 utc | 6

LOCKHART: “Not While We’re Eating–N.V.A. learn marines on a search and destroy mission don’t like to be interrupted while eating chow.” Search and destroy. Uh, we have a new directive from M.A.F. on this. In the future, in place of “search and destroy,” substitute the phrase “sweep and clear.” Got it?
JOKER: Got it. Very catchy.

Posted by: Syd Barrett | Jun 29 2005 5:40 utc | 8

Well, well well….the real Masters Of It All, used Pervitin, and timed it right for their appearance on stage. 20 minutes after the shot, the leader would suffer unavoidable burnout, and had to retreat.
I think, we all believed the hype too much! These are not even Mayberry Machiavellies, they are Walmart Machiavellies!
As soon as somebody, please, will poke their airship, they will conflate like the Hindenburg at Lakehurst!
Where are the New Dems With Lances! To the frontline, now!

Posted by: Werner Dieter Thomas | Jun 29 2005 5:51 utc | 10

Another shift in rhetoric in a similar vein is the focus on terrorists. He mentioned Zarqawi and bin Laden, but not Saddam. He made no mention of rogue regimes or WMD, but did mention fundamentalism. He was really casting this war in Iraq as a war against bin Laden this time, bringing Iraq back into the “War on Terror” fold. I guess with this administration the enemies are interchangeable, and they’ll try anything when they are desperate. This probably allows them to mention 9/11 more frequently too.

Posted by: hamburger | Jun 29 2005 6:04 utc | 12

“the timing of the US settlement with Saddam’s bunch means that the Americans want to involve this bunch in the drafting of the constitution and the forthcoming elections.”
Yeah, I saw this. As always, the tricky thing is telling who is trying to sell out who.
He was really casting this war in Iraq as a war against bin Laden this time, bringing Iraq back into the “War on Terror” fold.
I think I’m beginning to see how the new line fits together. The “enemy” in Iraq — the really bad guys, the ones we can’t negotiate with — is being narrowed down to Zarqaqi and the “foreign devils.” That helps with the propaganda need to tie everything to 9/11.
(Plus, let’s face it, turning a province the size of North Carolina into an Al Qaeda sanctuary and training center is probably the absolute biggest fuck up in the big hairy bag of Bush’s fuckups. Which means trying to clean the bastards out really is priority number one — even if der Field Marshal does’t have a clue how to get the job done.)
But the “insurgents” — which may or may not include the Baathists, depending on whether they’ve got “blood on their hands” — are being rehabilitated, which signals either a fairly desperate bid to split the resistance and get ths Sunnis involved in the political process, or an attempt to create an armed counterweight to SCIRI and the Shi’a militia (i.e. divide and conquer) or both.
Either way, this is probably just going to suck the Americans deeper into Iraq’s incipient civil war.
Trust the Cheney administration to make a quagmire even deeper.

Posted by: Billlmon | Jun 29 2005 6:40 utc | 14

Oyez, Oyez, Hoi Polloi, Attencion S’il Vous Plait
Lincoln bespoke in the Gettysburg Address:
“…and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
That phrase from Lincoln’s address is an anachronism, demolished by the corruption that is BIG MONEY POLITICS in the USA, the unaccountable National Security Council and the apathy, laziness and stupidity of American voters. Our system produces non inquisitive citizens that are motivated to believe what they are told while their information channels are propagandized and controlled by the power elite. We currently have what can only be defined as a Corpocracy, not a Democracy.
Corpocracy: A government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations.
Read the history of Fascist Italy under Il Duce. The USA is headed that way if not already there is some respects. Corporate America controls this country to the detriment of The People. What is meant by that is: Money talks, jive walks. Politicians need vast sums of money to win their races for political office. That money mostly comes from corporations. Corporations are “rational” actors. They do not waste money on lost causes and they expect a “payback.” That payback is reduced “taxes” or contracts paid for by the governed. By “taxes”, it is meant that the cost of doing business is reduced so the executives of the corporations can pay themselves more at the expense of the workers and the governed, plain and simple. Money talks, jive walks. By “contracts” we are talking about awarding taxpayer money to corporations without the oversight required to make sure said contracts are “arms length” transactions that optimally benefit the taxpayer, The People. Money talks, jive walks, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, SUCKER!
Once the powerful realized they could vote themselves a larger paycheck, democracy was lost to corruption. Read the history of the bank scandals of the mid-19th century to see the beginnings of the corrupting of our government. The Civil War sealed its democratic death through the corruption appurtenant to war material purchases. Eisenhower warned about the “Military Industrial Complex”, but this corruption by Corporate America was well underway 90 years or so earlier.
All I can ask is, “Where are Barbara and Jenna Bush?” Why aren’t they on the frontlines fighting daddy’s war? Maybe some US Army recruiters could look them up as I’m sure daddy wouldn’t interfere with his daughters going off to Iraq to do a little democracy implementation at the point of a bayonet, no? After all, as the Prez said:
“And to those watching tonight who are considering a military career, there is no higher calling than service in our Armed Forces. We live in freedom because every generation has produced patriots willing to serve a cause greater than themselves.”
And, any proud dad, such as the commander-in-chief, would love to have his daughters be true patriots, no? Jive walks, Barbara and Jenna on the frontlines talks. Prez put your daughters where your mouth is.
Ooops, I forgot, wars are for the poor to fight so the rich and powerful can remain so. And, it has been so throughout history. Well, that might not be totally correct as in the past many leaders sent their sons to fight. Today that should also include their daughters. Where are Barbara and Jenna Bush? No NeoCon cowards, calling them chicken hawks demeans a fine raptor, are stepping up to the plate. None of their children are on the frontlines and most if not all of them dodged the draft when they had the opportunity to do their patriotic duty.
Let the poor die so the elite may remain in and gain in power and wealth. How many oil industry executives have sons or daughters fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan? NONE!!! How many Halliburton executives have sons or daughters fighting on the frontlines? NONE!!! How many Bechtel executives are worrying about their children or grandchildren on the frontlines? NONE!!! Who are making vast sums of money from this illegal, immoral war??? Only those whose children and grandchildren are not at risk of becoming 21st century canon fodder. We The People voted these bastards into office to rape and pillage the world and our national treasury and send OUR children to die for their self-aggrandizement. What have we done? Please read the following from a true national hero:
http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
There are 2 exigencies that MUST be fought for and executed if WE THE PEOPLE are to regain our government of, by and for the people. Those 2 exigencies are:
1. Only citizens should be allowed to contribute to a candidate for political office in any form or fashion, no loopholes: no corporation, lobbyist, US group, union, foreign government or foreign organization should be allowed to do so. And, a reasonable cap must be placed on the total per annum contribution from any individual citizen. Penalties for transgressions must be severe enough to dissuade the venial from corrupting the system that financially supports, by The People, political campaigns. And, those campaigns should only be allowed to be contested for no more than 3 months during which real discourse happens, not the staged, fake crap that is shoved down the throats of the gullible. The public airwaves must be open gratis to all legitimate candidates. We must take the money out of campaigns and therefore politics. The political donation cap must be well within the ability of the average citizen to contribute to political organizations and the donations MUST not be tax deductible. One’s political predilection must not be born by the mass of the taxed!!! Another way of saying that is, “Put your money where your mouth is with no subsidy by those that choose otherwise.” The turnover rate in our Congress is lower than the old Soviet Politburo. We have a sick system that needs the reform NOW. Or as Mark Twain said so succinctly many years ago: “there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”
2. Since all politicians are servants of the public, the hoi polloi, none of their business should ever be conducted without reasonable pre-notification of all citizens concerning the issues to be discussed and decided upon along with the presence of all who wish to attend said meetings. All meeting records MUST be public domain information. No meetings to discuss any public business should ever be held behind closed doors by any branch of the government with the exception of serious national security issues. Those serious national security issues, ALL OF THEM, must be reviewed by a bi-partisan group to make sure no congress or executive branch uses national security as a ruse to keep important information from the governed, which it has on a regular basis of late. This issue has been the GREATEST stumbling block in our 21st century attempt to regain a real democracy of which we have precious little at this time! We have a propagandized mass that votes in contrived elections with their reptilian brain, that is, motivated by fear promulgated by the corrupt bastards the rule this nation at this time.
We must take back our government. WE THE PEOPLE must control it. That is the very definition and essence of “democracy.” We have been duped by the corporate media, whose fourth-estate function, at which they fail miserably, is crucial for a healthy democracy in this day and age.
Don’t waste you time with the trivial. Work without delay or diversion to mandate that our democracy be regained through the 2 exigencies listed above. The light of sunshine on the corrupt and those drunk with power is the only true antiseptic we have against the pernicious desires of totalitarian fascists; those who tax and spend our money for their self-aggrandizement. The Roves of the world will tie our minds into knots with issues like “flag burning” and Terry Schivo to dilute our resolute commitment to democracy. Don’t let them defocus you! Sunshine and campaign finance reform, the real thing, not the BS that has been blown up our backsides, are the only avenues we have to truly regain what we have frittered away through gross negligence.
We get the government we deserve. We have been lazy, uninterested in learning about history so we can make informed decisions about the present and future and can’t be bothered to educate ourselves to think logically and rationally so that we can become better citizens in our democracy. Democratic governance is hard work. If we are not up to it we will get the government we deserve. When ignorance is the rule, the rule with be totalitarian.

Posted by: DanDeMan | Jun 29 2005 6:59 utc | 16

Billmon- I think that’s a very astute analysis of the “out” for those who will not negotiate with terrorists.
ck- I think about the current junta much the way you do. The history of the twentieth century could be written as a reaction to various attempts to implement greater democracy (and variations on economic democracy) –which is, in turn, the continued struggle for democracy that began in the U.S. and France long before the last century.
I try to imagine what might have been if the CIA had not believed Reinhard Gehlen, or hadn’t created its own “govt” by ignoring orders and implementing Operation Paperclip. it does seem like snafu, part 50mil, to have a war of aggression based upon (yet again) cooked intel and the word of a man like Chalabi, who may have been playing for Team America or Team Iran, who knows…the more things change… it’s hard to imagine an America in which an overinflated danger of communism did not skew reality…because it’s still going on. When I read some right winger comments, it’s like they’re zombies created by the voodoo of Weimar hatred or Joe (Charlie) McCarthyism. The way they view liberals as “commies” would be funny if they didn’t seem to be so seriously disturbed.
Unkka- who are these engineers? I looked at all the pictures and read the captions, and I do not understand if they are asking questions or providing their own answers, except for the part about people declared alive who were claimed to be the terrorists on the planes. Is this site trying to say that no planes hit the wtc? I do see the claim that no plane hit the pentagon.
anyway, I’m no engineer, so the information doesn’t mean anything to me, beyond the fuel amts needed to melt steel, but even then I don’t know if that claim is correct.
people who claim that no planes hit any of the bldgs always confuse me because I always wonder…what happened to those people who were on the planes, if the planes were not flown into the various bldgs.? The idea of explosives planted in the bldgs is certainly believeable, but who did it, if it was done, is still unanswered…and wasn’t bin Laden trained as an engineer, and doesn’t his family, to this day, build (and thus also know how to take down) major construction projects…like the American airbase in Saudi Arabia, for example…

Posted by: fauxreal | Jun 29 2005 7:19 utc | 18

Who knows fauxreal, I just thought if there were some engineer’s here and that it might interest them. I think squarepants spongebob did it. But of course we will never really know.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 29 2005 8:37 utc | 20

Billmon: Plus, let’s face it, turning a province the size of North Carolina into an Al Qaeda sanctuary and training center is probably the absolute biggest fuck up in the big hairy bag of Bush’s fuckups.
Hm, I don’t know; even if we consider different answers as to fuckup for whom.
For the Iraqis, the biggest fuckup might either be the empowerment of divisive forces both in the puppet government and the insurgency, or the opressive fundamentalism of the same.
For US dominance aspirations, it is the empowerment of Iran, paired with the failure to really control the oil.
What is the biggest security threat stemming from the botched Iraq war, for the US mainland, I’m not sure. The reprecussions of, say, turmoil in Saudi Arabia, would be much more profound than 9/11-level terrorism. It wouldn’t just affect thousands, but millions.
But both the Osama administration and the Cheney administration want people to focus on single events of massive tragedy. Yet, when compared to global warming, third world poverty, proliferation of small arms to conflict zones, or peak oil, terrorism is an insignificant problem.

Posted by: DoDo | Jun 29 2005 11:33 utc | 22

DM, I saw pictures of steel deformed due to brittleness, and the broken-off rivets. (I can distinguish that from cold deformation.) I also saw documentaries about tests that reproduced the effect.
Fires didn’t destroy WTC7 at freefall speed, DUH! – it was the ongoing collapse that fanned the flames of fires on just crushed levels. DM, this is worse stuff than the wings.
As for Kevin Ryan, I have to look that up, but I already found that he wasn’t even a steel or fire specialist at EHL (he was into water testing), and this I can also see from his rather illogical arguments: the ignition temperature of paper etc. is not the maximum temperature such fires can achieve – well duh, it is the minimum temperature: the maximum temperature reached is determined by the balance of heat given off and heat produced, so fires are self-feeding: in this case, high temperatures ensure that everything burns that in turn maintains the high temperatures, i.e. it is irrelevant how long the kerosene itself lasted; no buildings of similar structure suffered total burnout so far, and this is the only example of self-feeding building fire kicked off with kerosene and with the blasting-off of fireproof material by impact derbis. Also, those 500K-exposed pieces were only some of the steel tested.
Back to the wings, I myself had some doubts – until I saw one of these “where are the wings” photos with airplane outline overlaid. It was a photo from the air, before the collapse of the levels above the crash, and just below the plotted B757 outline, I could discern the same wing marks visible on the close-ups I linked to. (Unfortunately, I couldn’t rediscover this one.)
Where I still have doubts is the timeline of the fighter jet scramblings. I have since learnt that some of the delay was caused by airline execs insisting on keeping hijackings secret, and that there weren’t ready-for-scrambling planes at the closest airport to DC, but it still doesn’t add up.

Posted by: DoDo | Jun 29 2005 13:08 utc | 24

@DoDo. As I said, there are in excess of 100,000 websites on this stuff, and more information on Kevin Ryan also, so this is redundant. You can add all the sarcasm you like, but maybe you can expand on (a) how your university education in material physics and thermodynamics equates “brittle” with “deformed” and (b) explain to me again what DUH! – it was the ongoing collapse that fanned the flames of fires on just crushed levels actually means. I think there are a few offers out there for the taking involving a sizable amount of money for anyone you can give a technical explanation on the collapse of wtc7.

Posted by: DM | Jun 29 2005 13:45 utc | 26

DM, The piece you link to, Jim Hoffman’s red herring treatise, is hardly more credible than many of the other explanations I have read. I scanned it and I saw no reference to the smashed engine found in the Pentagon debris, which was not from a 757. As with many of the reports he criticises, Hoffman chooses his evidence to fit his theory.
You may have seen the pic of the engine found on a Manhattan street, which was from a 737. Oooops.
Dodo, I can understand why you can’t accept that the towers were demolished by placed explosives. It is hard to believe that such a conspiracy could hold together this long for one thing. It was well executed, that is certain.
It has been proven that…
1) The energy required to pulverize the towers’ concrete was much higher than was available from its falling mass.
2) Large basement explosions were experienced by maintenance people before the aircraft impact.
3) WTC7 collapsed similarly without an impact.
There are many more of course but those three are enough for this discussion. Sorry, your eloquence cannot usurp the facts here.

Posted by: rapt | Jun 29 2005 15:24 utc | 28

Now tis gets out of hand…
DM: (a) how your university education in material physics and thermodynamics equates “brittle” with “deformed”
It doesn’t, and I never equated the two.
As for (b), I was guessing you meant flames visible when the building collapses: I found no clue in the link provided as to what you meant. BTW, it is again funny that on the page claiming there is no photographic evidence of fire, we see a 75% soot-covered wall, obviously from an estinguished or subsided fire on the lower floors. OTOH I submit upon re-reading the cause of the WTC7 collapse is not settled, tho’ there is that interview about the building’s corpse being ‘pulled’.
rapt, sources.

Posted by: DoDo | Jun 29 2005 16:04 utc | 30

Uncle Scam, ‘n all, there was an old man…
…who was a great story teller – his stories were vivid, visual, frightening and believable.
The old man loved telling stories to his niece Amy.
She listened with bated breath and while she followed she believed her images and lived the stories, as small children do.
One day Amy, now 10, became so involved in the story that she saw it around her. First, she noticed that other people had heard the story too (how she did not know), and that they believed it. That was peculiar, as she associated the stories only with her Uncle.
Then, she looked around her town – and saw. She saw bits and pieces of the story in her own home town. She saw confirmation of past happenings, and portents too.
She noticed an abandoned building, partly smashed, with red lettering on the front. That had been in the story. The dry river was there – exactly as described.
In the cemetery, she came upon a grave. A baby boy had died. Jonah his name was. Uncle had told her. Had said how and why.
There were no flowers or plants on the grave.
Amy asked around about the little baby Jonah. Some people repeated Uncle’s story. Others said it was a mystery grave, a grave for a ghost, no body, a grave which had not been paid for, there had been no funeral. The grave was just there and no one wanted to touch it or ask. One never knew. Maybe a baby boy from another county, a mysterious, unhappy thing. Or the Devil’s work.
– synopsis of a story by Stephen King.
Just a flight of fancy, sorry if seen as OT, it is still a bar, right?
No ferns, no crystal glasses but bowls of peanuts to pick at.

Posted by: Noisette | Jun 29 2005 16:18 utc | 32

The borg drones over at NRO have already been programmed with the latest talking points that billmon lays out.
Lowry:

…Again a deal was cut. (Moqtada) Sadr’s forces were ousted from the mosques and stopped fighting. Sadr eventually decided to take part in the political process, and when the new elected Iraqi government was formed in May, his movement got two important ministries. Is this a perfect result? No; Sadr is a contemptible thug. In any orderly society he would be behind bars. But Iraq is obviously not orderly. If he is no longer shooting at Americans and his followers are venting their grievances through politics, that is all to the good.
We should be aiming to do the same with the Sunni insurgents (the foreign jihadists are truly irredeemable).
Jihadis = bad
Insurgents = Not really so bad that we can’t negotiate with them

Posted by: bling | Jun 29 2005 17:09 utc | 34

As I said, there are in excess of 100,000 websites on this stuff,
Exactly, billions of flies eat shit, maybe you shoud try it.
I don´t think this argument can be solved as there are too many believes. As an engineer (and being trained and having done quite a bit of metal material testing) I have not found major disconnects in the official stories.
Some things left unexplainable? Yes, but that is always the case in such incidents. And then there is this thought: How many people would have been needed to pull something like 9/11 off without planes? Some hundred I guess, and the chance for all of some hundred to keep their mouth shut is essentially zero.

Posted by: b | Jun 29 2005 18:42 utc | 36

Excellent post! I resoundingly echo John Francis Lee’s observation above: the Iraqi Shia had better watch out for the American stab-in-the-back!

Posted by: Marc Valdez | Jun 29 2005 21:07 utc | 38

one of life’s little ironies is that with the massive force used by us forces they are completely unable to defeat or even make advances against a resistance that has neither a coherent leadership nor posesses anything like the armoury of the us army
yet in the belly of the beast itself – there are over 1,500,000 gang members who have the best armnaments crack cocaine can buy & who in another space & time would be the making of an insurrection as in l a in 1992 or even an insurgency
yet as someone – perhaps chomsky or perhaps the author of the politics of heroin in south east asia – who sd that the gangstas always support the foreign policy of the mother nation
& it is true in most advanced capitalist countries exist an underclass whom in normal historical circumstances would be the wellspring of revolt
it is not an accident thant in every city in the world where the underclass exists as a potential force – it is smothered by both power & powder
that was one of the more successful projects of the covert operations of the cia

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 29 2005 23:33 utc | 40

re: 9/11 theories and countertheories and official stories.
What I have never understood is why other steel-armature skyscrapers suffered major fires and remained standing — like the one in Spain. Was there something particularly shoddy about the construction technique of the WTC cluster?
…and I still want to know about those alleged put options on airlines stock 🙂
But really, it’s a wearying mess of conspiracy theory, CYA, exploitation by BushCo and others for political careerism… very muddy waters. Whether FUBAR or LIHOP or MIHOP, a lot of people have a lot of motivation to lie, obfuscate, destroy evidence, etc.
I haven’t had the energy or patience to wade through all the conflicting materials and figure out what I make of it. In 30 years if I am still alive and if history is still being practised in any meaningful way, perhaps a generation of young historians will have done the heavy lifting — as Kofsky did for Truman and the war scare of ’48. And we’ll be able to read a lucid expose, a coherent narrative instead of this din of competing claims.
It wouldn’t be beyond belief that the buildings were rigged with explosives; the collapse did look an awful lot like a classic controlled demo but without the usual mesh wrapping to contain the debris… after Op Northwoods, Op Paperclip, Tuskegee Experiment, the lies about Hiroshima and Nagasaki… is there anything we can really believe people with great power would not resort to, any depth to which they would not sink?

Posted by: DeAnander | Jun 30 2005 0:56 utc | 42

On Mosaic tonight (June 29th) the Abu Dhabi newscast announced the negotiations between the US and Iragi fighters. If you cannot catch Mosaic on Link TV (DirecTV channel 375) you may be able to see it here once it is archived.

Posted by: joe_thomas | Jun 30 2005 2:44 utc | 44

@b
Exactly, billions of flies eat shit, maybe you shoud try it.
Something lost in translation – or are you telling me to eat shit? Should I be jumping over the bar counter and jobbing the bartender?
There is a bit more to this than ‘metal material testing’, and if you have not found major disconnects in the official stories, that’s fine. Hopefully your resume as an engineer doesn’t include high-rise construction.

Posted by: DM | Jun 30 2005 4:04 utc | 46

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/7b2a3b4e-9d4e-11d9-a227-00000e2511c8.html

Iraq’s insurgents ‘seek exit strategy’

March 25 2005 By Steve Negus in Baghdad

Many of Iraq’s predominantly Sunni Arab insurgents would lay down their arms and join the political process in exchange for guarantees of their safety and that of their co-religionists, according to a prominent Sunni politician.

Sharif Ali Bin al-Hussein, who heads Iraq’s main monarchist movement and is in contact with guerrilla leaders, said many insurgents including former officials of the ruling Ba’ath party, army officers, and Islamists have been searching for a way to end their campaign against US troops and Iraqi government forces since the January 30 election.

Posted by: Pogo | Jun 30 2005 6:45 utc | 48

@b
The comment about 100,000 websites was not to say that numbers backed me up, but that this stuff has been dredged in sufficient detail elsewhere, and that it would be redundant to turn MoA into 9-11 website #100,001.
There is a lot of dross on these 9-11 websites, a lot of misinformation and quite likely, disinformation.
Your argument, ‘no explosives would have been needed’ for psychological effect seems self-evidently correct – but only if in fact it was Jihadis ‘what done it’. If it was in fact a MIHOP op, then there may be the question of evidence (in addition to the fact that a movie-type pyrotechnic display has a guaranteed TV impact). If this was a MIHOP op, it is not too hard to understand the rationalization that half-measures might not have the desired effect.
There are a lot of theories. Personally, I have convinced myself that it was a MIHOP op – but at this point – I try to avoid too many unanswerable questions (like ‘how could they keep this secret’ etc.). There might be a gleaming new building (either complete or nearly complete) standing of the former site of WTC7 – but I believe this is still one of the keys to either proving or disproving the 9-11 “conspiracy”. The likelihood of WTC7 collapsing from relatively small fires, without being hit by a plane, and that these 3 buildings are the only steel framed building to collapse in this manner – ever – seems like a remote coincidence. When the odds against something get this high, you might as well say ‘impossible’. To me, the official story of the collapse of WTC7 is just not credible. Which leaves me at the bottom of a very deep rabbit-hole.

Posted by: DM | Jun 30 2005 8:22 utc | 50

jj is right, “they” will never let us know; it is too large a baseball for the public to swallow. Most people do know however, or at least enough do to trash the credibility of the US political/judicial system permanently.
One could say then that our beloved “western” civilisation has already been destroyed; the institutions don’t work any more. To me that is rather obvious.
So now we are in a mad desperate race to salvage something, fighting for the spoils while oblivious to the fact that the ship is going down. It is a very interesting phenomenon, especially in that none of us has ever seen anything like it before, and have no idea how to cope with it.
I’m still curious to know what the perps expect to do with all that stolen treasure. Al Martin has some ideas on this. He is one who had the opportunity to join in the systematic plundering but opted out. Perhaps he knows that in the end all ya need is love.

Posted by: rapt | Jun 30 2005 14:27 utc | 52