McCain vs. Clinton?


By Alexander Cockburn & Jeffery St. Clair
Jan. 30, 2008


Before his handlers told the press Bill Clinton wouldn't be taking any more questions, the former president gave it as his considered opinion that his wife and John McCain are a lot alike, and that assuming the two become their parties' nominees, the fall campaign would be "the most cordial in history."

Setting aside such well-known traits as ill-temper towards subordinates, what Mrs Clinton and McCain certainly do have in common is a readiness to hang their own party out to dry when it's a matter of personal advancement.

McCain has steadily amassed political capital by promoting himself as the Republicans' maverick, on campaign reform, pork barreling, immigration. He lashes the Christian right. He voted against the Bush tax cuts and denounced Don Rumsfeld early on for his management of the war.

Hillary's been a career triangulator and indeed introduced her husband to the dark art, by recruiting Jesse Helms' pollster, Dickie Morris, when Bill was trying to come back from defeat after one term as the governor of Arkansas. It was Hillary who told Bill firmly in the summer of 1996 that he should sign the Republicans' bill destroying welfare. The chilling aspect to this counsel was that it came at a moment when it was clear Bill was going to hammer Bob Dole in the presidential contest. Hillary's view was that it would be better for them to be seen as running athwart the old liberal lions, like Ted Kennedy who waited twelve long years for his revenge, in the form of his endorsement on Monday of Obama.

McCain's victory in Florida on Tuesday is a measure of the terrible shape the Republican Party now finds itself in.

They now have a front-runner that no faction in the party really likes. He's old, short, bald, with a history of serious skin cancer and a record of psychological instability. He is favor of a war deeply disliked by about 70 per cent of all Americans and has publicly proclaimed that the U.S. may well be in Iraq for a hundred years. With the country is poised on the lip of recession he calls for budget cuts. In Michigan he told distraught auto workers, --many of them "Reagan Democrats", that their jobs were never coming back. In Florida he said he didn't know much about economics but that Social Security would have to be fixed --i.e. privatized.

Over half the people voting in Florida's Republican primary were over 60 and the Arizona senator's blithe endorsement of privatization would have scarcely been encouraging as they read the slumping bottom lines on their private 401K retirement accounts.

Small wonder the Clintons are licking their lips at the likelihood, deemed inconceivable only a few short weeks ago, that McCain will be the Republican nominee in the fall. The Republican right may well be making the calculation that it would no bad thing to have Hillary Clinton in the White House for four years, encumbered with the mess in Iraq and an economy in recession.

Just as she did in Michigan Hillary flouted a pledge to shun Florida's Democratic primary and then went on the networks to tout a glorious victory. Obama was nowhere to be seen, showing once again that he's no rough and tumble campaigner, preferring to maintain a lofty posture at all times, reminiscent of Gene McCarthy trying to vie with Bobby Kennedy back in 1968.
(Whereas Ted and Caroline came out for Obama, Bobby's children have endorsed Hillary.)

Looking at Super Tuesday, on February 5, it's hard to see how Obama can overcome the Clintons' back-alley political methods and their institutional advantage in holding the party levers. The day of the Florida primary Hillary won the endorsement of the black Los Angeles congresswoman Maxine Waters, to whom the Clintons should be anathema on drug policy, on mandatory sentencing, on welfare.

Obama also faces formidable obstacles in trying to win over Hispanic voters, whose loyalty to Hillary certainly cost him the Nevada caucuses. As Sergio Bendixen, a pollster working for Hillary, put it in the New Yorker, "The Hispanic voters ­- and I want to say this very carefully --have not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates." So much for the Rainbow Coalition.

There is a way Obama could make an impact on these millions of Hispanics he has thus far failed to set on fire. It would ratchet up the animus between the Obama and Clinton campaigns, but he needs to do this.

Across the next crucial days he could declare bluntly that while Mrs Clinton may profess profound sympathy for the concerns of Hispanics, the substantive record of the Clinton presidency was terrible.

The Free Trade bill ratified by Bill Clinton in 1994 sent hundreds of thousands of Mexicans north across the border out of Mexico's reeling economy, there to be met by criminal sanctions - aimed at the poor generally - harsher on Clinton's watch than on Bush's. It was Senator Obama, not Senator Clinton, who was a co-sponsor of the Immigrant Reform Bill, a major issue of 2007 for the Latino population.

To stay in the game with the Clintons Obama has to play it rougher. He has very little time to escape from the box into which Hillary and Bill have been trying to trap him as the black candidate Hispanics should not trust.

The campaign does offer some pleasures. There was the rout of the Clintons in South Carolina and now the humiliation of Rudy Giuliani in Florida. He spent $60 million and, in the entire campaign until his withdrawal, won precisely one delegate. In September he had a favorability rating of 55 per cent. In January it was down to 20 per cent. People just couldn't stand him.

It's really too bad one can't throw Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee into some kind of blender.

Huckabee has a great sense of humor, and has been the only candidate to evince a spontaneous sense of class politics. In Florida he denounced the stimulus package as a trickle-down tactic that wouldn't be any kind of long-term solution for people in need. He called for a huge public works program, adding a couple of lanes to 1nterstate 95. It's true he wants to substitute the Ten Commandment for the Bill of Rights, but the US Supreme Court would no doubt stop him in his tracks.

Among both Republicans and Democrats Ron Paul is the only one who talks with any passion about defending the Constitution and ending the war. It's true he should have been more vocal, denouncing those racist newsletters that went out over his letterhead, but one the other hand there's his forthright statement to Wolf Blitzer on CNN on January 10:

I attack two wars that blacks are suffering from. One, the war overseas. In all wars minorities suffer the most. So they join me in this position I have against the war in Iraq. And what about the war on drugs? What other candidate will stand up and say I will pardon all blacks, all whites, everybody who were convicted for non-violent drug acts and drug crimes. And this is where the real discrimination is. if you want to look for discrimination, it's the judicial system. So I am the antiracist because I am the only candidate, Republican or Democrat, who [wants to] protect the minority against these vicious drug laws.

Did anyone on the left, flailing away Paul, ever hold Dennis Kucinich's feet to the fire for all those years attacking choice, before his presidential ambitions prompted to jump the fence and change his views?

Not for Kucinich the rigorous adherence to principle that prompted Paul to launch a nutty attack on social security to a mostly elderly audience in Florida. Small wonder he ended up arm wrestling Fred Thompson for fifth place.

Still, even Giuliani, in his strange farewell address, confessed that "Ron Paul won every debate."

So we advise Paul to quit wasting his money in the Republican money and instead to launch off as an independent or libertarian, denouncing the war and going to the inner cities on a redemption tour to talk about racism and the judicial process --which got significantly worse in Clinton time.

The left keeps laboring the obvious, that Paul is not a leftist and has some bad positions. His posture on immigration is awful. But the Clinton record is substantively far, far worse, in terms of the terrible harvest reaped by NAFTA and the WTO and by Bill Clinton's own record on immigration and the treatment of Hispanics in the drug war.

John Edwards has now announced that it's all over for his campaign, conclusively derailed by his lame showing in South Carolina, which was his native state and the scene of his victory in 2004. Despite being the only white male in a state that seemed primed for his populist message, he finished a distant third, with 17 per cent. The conventional wisdom among the pundits is that Edwards' supporters will now transfer their loyalties to Barack Obama who, probably with an eye to this possibility, has been injecting some Edwardsian themes into his airy Aeolian homilies.

However, the supersensitive antennae of Dickie Morris twitched alertly on Tuesday night on the Fox Channel as he pored over exit polls in Florida and declared that (a) he could detect signs that the Republican Party was lurching to the left because of the economy and (b) that such votes as Edwards was getting in Florida came from people who could not bring themselves to vote for a woman or a black.

Maybe that type of voter will switch allegiance to Ron Paul on Super Tuesday.

Edwards out means Nader in. In the same hour as news of Edwards' withdrawal, CounterPunch received an alert from Nader's camp, which had tactfully waited 30 seconds after Edwards's exit, to announce the formation of "the Nader 2008 presidential exploratory committee". Yes, there's already a website, www.naderexplore08.org.

Source:
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn01302008.html
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Sibel Edmonds: 'Buckle up, there's much more coming.'

By Luke Ryland

OpEd News

January 28, 2008

In the last few weeks, UK's Times has run a series of articles about the so-called 'Sibel Edmonds case.' ('For sale: West's deadly nuclear secrets, 'FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft' and 'Tip-off thwarted nuclear spy ring probe')

Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds stumbled into a world of espionage, nuclear black market, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and corruption at the highest levels of the US government.

I interviewed Sibel yesterday regarding the current investigation and reporting by the Times, the failures of the US media, and last week's decision by the Bush administration to legalize the sale of nuclear technology to Turkey, in an apparent to exonerate prior criminal activity by officials in his administration.

Sibel also has some urgent 'action items' so that we can stop these dangerous nuclear proliferation activities. I urge you to act on her suggestions.

Luke Ryland: What do you have to say about the recent work by the Insight journalists - Chris Gourlay, Jonathan Calvert, Joe Lauria - at the UK's Times?

Sibel Edmonds: They've done good, solid reporting so far by doing what reporters are supposed to. They have been chasing sources and getting their hands on documents. It's pretty simple. As you know, this story has been available to any journalist for six years now. There's been a lot of speculation in the last few weeks that American reporters haven't touched this story because they are 'corporate owned' but it is wrong to exonerate these reporters so quickly.

Many of them are too close to their official sources, and some are simply lazy. This Times team chases sources, and if they can't reach them one way, they'll try and try again, or they'll seek out alternate sources, or find other ways to ensure that they get the story. When I hear from US reporters, they say 'Sibel, give us all the documents we'll need, and you line up all the sources for us, and then maybe we'll do a story' and if one source doesn't return their phone call, they simply give up. That's not journalism!

Luke Ryland: Why has the US failed on this story so dramatically for 6 years?

Sibel Edmonds: It's a combination of things, obviously. You need to consider that the entire US press corps has failed on this story; not only the regular print and TV media, but the alternative media has failed on this too.

Part of the reason is that journalists are simply too close to their official sources. Those sources might tell the journalist that there's nothing to the story, and so the journalist gives up on it, or the official sources might 'request' that the journalist to stay away from the story, and the journalist is then concerned about losing access to the source in the future.

Another reason is the partisanship. With the foreign press, there is no partisanship, and that's one reason why they have been more effective at covering this case, and I'm not just talking about the recent Times articles here. With the US media, it appears as though if there is no clear partisan angle, then there's no story. As you know, this case is spread over two administrations, and that appears to make it difficult for the reporters to cover the story. Even within one news organization you might have one journalist who wants to use the story to indict Clinton, and another who wants to use the story to bash Bush, and in the end neither of them write about the story because it doesn't fit their partisanship, their 'narrative', so they just drop it altogether.

I had such high hopes for the alternative press, and they do a lot of good work, but partisanship repeatedly gets in the way there too, on both sides.

The US media also suffers from a pack mentality. I was told by one executive that they weren't doing the story because it was 'old news' because 60 Minutes did a single segment in October 2002, even though they only covered a tiny part of the case. This executive literally told me that he'd only cover the story if it was 'hot and sexy.' I often think that I'd need to be able to hire Britney Spears to be a spokesperson - and this is not just for my case, but for any of the many other solid, important cases at the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. Apparently this is what it would take to get any coverage.

Of course, given the pack mentality, if any of these stories does become 'hot and sexy' then all the journalists focus on the same issues and there's no differentiation in their reporting.

The other major problem in the US is the focus on symptoms, rather than root causes. My case is a good example, but there are lots of others too. Look at the early reporting on my case in 2002, the Washington Post broke the story in July 2002 about the espionage in the translation bureau and then they dropped the story after two weeks. They stopped reporting on it when more important information came out and the State Secrets Privilege was invoked. To this day not a single US reporter has asked 'Why was the State Secrets Privilege been invoked here? What is going on?'

Just this week I was approached by a major US outlet who wanted to do a story on Kevin Taskesen! [Ed note: Taskesen was an incompetent FBI translator who got his job because his wife worked in the administrative office] This is absolutely the most trivial element of the case, and it has already been reported at length. I told them that they could learn everything they needed to know by watching 60 Minutes, 2002. Again, the US media needs to start looking at the root causes of these problems, not the symptoms.

Luke Ryland: Will the US media start reporting on this now that it is 'hot and sexy' again?

Sibel Edmonds: It's hard to know. After being told for years that they won't cover it because it is 'old news,' now there are certain officials in the agencies quietly telling journalists to stay away from the story because I came across a highly sensitive covert national security operation.

Also, Turkey's army of lobbyists in DC are very effective. The US press tends to stay away from any stories critical of Turkey, I would say even more than Israel.

There's also the possible problem of 'eating crow' but I hope this isn't an issue, this story is way too important for any of that. The information that has been published in the Times recently could have easily come out four years ago in the US press. We now need everyone to focus on the important issues.

I have one message for the US media: If they think this is over, it's not over. Much more will come out. They won't be able to ignore it any longer, and so I hope they get over any reluctance they might have.

Look at the positive press that the Times' series has received since their first article ran. Do you think their editors haven't noticed? The Times is adding more and more resources to the story, more journalists, bigger budgets, and more importantly, they are getting more and more sources coming forward to shed light on these illegal activities. As I have said from the beginning, this story is not about me, there are many sources who have been waiting for the right time to come forward, I've probably never even heard of most of them, and now they are coming forward. This will play out like Watergate played out, with the drip, drip, drip. So I say to everyone 'Buckle up, there's much more coming.'

So, hopefully American reporters will start to cover the story. I'm not particularly confident, but to a certain degree it doesn't matter that much because the internet and the blogs can spread the reporting from the UK as soon as it hits the wires.

Luke Ryland: Two weeks after the first article in the Times about the involvement of high-level US officials being involved with Turkish and Israeli interests in supplying the nuclear black market, President Bush quietly announced that the US will start supplying nuclear technology to Turkey. Do you think that is a coincidence?

Sibel Edmonds: The timing is certainly very, very suspicious. The proposals that are being floated are very suspicious too. There are reports that Turkey will build an enrichment facility, and that Turkey will become the key supplier of nuclear fuel to other Muslim countries who want nuclear power plants. None of this makes any sense.

And again, the US media is nowhere to be seen on this issue. Where are the journalists? Do you remember the noise made a couple of years ago when the US announced that it would supply India with nuclear technology? So far, nearly a week after the announcement and not a single major US media outlet has even reported on the deal! Think of the hypocrisy, with all the saber-rattling at Iran over enrichment.

If it's such a good idea to sell nuclear technology to Turkey, why isn't the White House out there selling the idea? Where are the arguments in the press saying that this will be good for regional stability, or that it will help reduce demand for oil, or even that it is simply good business because US firms will be able to sell their hardware and knowledge?

There's nothing! Silence. What does that tell you?

Luke Ryland: What needs to be done?

Sibel Edmonds: The way they've structured this deal is that Congress has 90 days from the announcement, now 84 days, to block the 'agreement' otherwise it basically becomes law.

The first thing that we need to do is to make sure that this doesn't 'automatically' become law.

We need the journalists, the experts, and the bloggers to raise hell over this issue, and we need to make sure that Congress investigates this properly before rubber-stamping it. The clock is ticking and we need to act now.

As you know, and this was even published in the White House press release on this issue, certain 'Turkish private entities' have been involved 'in certain activities directly relating to nuclear proliferation.' This includes supplying the A.Q. Khan network - which built Pakistan's nuclear bomb, and also supplied North Korea, Iran and other countries - but as the recent Times stories indicate, so much more as well.

The White House press release states that all these issues have been resolved; that the Turkish government has addressed these issues, that the US government has evaluated these actions and that the US government is satisfied, and that all of this is secret, classified!

Given the track record of this administration in abusing classification and distorting intelligence, why on earth would we trust them with this? What is in the report? Is it truthful? Why is it classified? We saw these exact same people do the same thing in the late 80s when they enabled Pakistan to get nuclear weapons. Richard Barlow did his best to stop them then, but if Congress doesn't hold hearings this time around the same thing will happen again. We should have stopped Pakistan then, but unless this 'classified' report is made public and the contents publicly debated, then the Barlow of today won't even get the chance to debunk whatever is in that 'classified' report. What conceivable logic is there in classifying the details of how Turkey has cleaned up its act regarding nuclear proliferation? If they have, they should be proud of it!

There are many great anti-proliferation organizations out there, we need to rally all of them, and all of the 'pro-transparency' organizations, to this cause. We need journalists to contact these experts for their opinion and expertise, and we need these experts to contact journalists to ensure that the story, and the issues, is covered, and covered thoroughly.

We also need to recruit bloggers and alternative media to keep the pressure on. Perhaps a 'countdown clock' as we count down the 90 days might help.

Luke Ryland: What are the next steps in the process?

Sibel Edmonds: I'm not exactly sure of the process at the moment, but it has been reported that this 'automatically' becomes law after the 90 days, somehow, unless Congress blocks or amends the legislation.

Apparently the approval process somehow includes convincing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee not to object, so those committees appear to be our first firewall.

(Ed note: Senate Foreign Relations Committee includes Joe Biden (Chair), Chris Dodd, John Kerry, Russ Feingold, Barbara Boxer, Barack Obama and Jim Webb for the Democrats, and Richard Lugar, Chuck Hagel and George Voinovich for the minority. Hopefully one of them will stand up on this important issue. The House side looks more difficult, the Chairman is Tom Lantos who was listed in Sibel's Rogue's Gallery, which apparently identifies 18 of the guilty parties in her case, so that might be a problem. Ron Paul is also on that committee, he might be a prime target for this campaign.)

Luke Ryland: Is there anything else we can do?

Sibel Edmonds: There is one other hope. As last week's White House press release states, Bill Clinton tried to pass this legislation in 2000 but "immediately after" Clinton tried to send it to Congress it was blocked because some people apparently highlighted Turkish involvement in the nuclear black market and, who knows, maybe threatened to blow the whistle. Those same individuals, and others like them, can stop this again, and they should do everything they can to make sure that this doesn't happen. They should try to do it internally, and if they can't do it internally, then they need reach out to journalists, either on or off the record. Hopefully some honest, dedicated people will try to block it again, but we can't rely on that. We need to pressure congress to ensure that this doesn't go through.

Time is running out, the countdown clock is ticking down, and we need to stop this now. We need the help of journalists, congress, nuclear proliferation experts, bloggers and those active citizens in the blogosphere and elsewhere.

Many thanks to Sibel, as always. Please do what you can to help block this proposed legislation.

If you can create a 'countdown clock' please contact me, and we'll offer it so that everyone can place it on their blogs and use it in their sigs etc.

Regarding alternative media, Sibel is particularly grateful to American Conservative and Antiwar.com for their objectivity and non-partisanship in covering this case. In particular, Phil Giraldi, Justin Raimondo, Joshua Franks and Scott Horton.

To reiterate Sibel's emphasis on the importance of the internet to help get the story out, Daily Kos statistics for the week Jan 19-25 have been released.

During a primary week when many were (rightly) complaining that campaign diaries made it almost impossible for other issues to get any attention, diaries related to Sibel's case dominated the list.

Sibel's story was both #1 and #2 for the week, and filled 3 of the top 11, and 4 of the top 25 diaries. Statistics at Democratic Underground will demonstrate the same level of interest in the case.

Thank you to all of you, and I ask that you continue to support the case, and I ask that journalists and bloggers pick up the story and support the great work done by the Times. It's about time, no?

Source:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_luke_ryl_080128_sibel_edmonds_3a__buck.htm

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I'm recommending this chart because of the data it contains and not because of the conclusions it seeks to have you draw from that data.

The Bush Administration is certainly directly responsible for some of the changes on this list, such as international opinion of the US, and the increases in our budget and trade deficits.

However, in many respects this chart is pure partisan bullshit. The most starkly annoying aspect is the inclusion of US dependence on foreign oil as a percentage of total oil consumption by the party that faught domestic oil exploration in Alaska. You're blaiming your partisan enemy for the inevitable consequences of the policies you advocated. That's as low as it gets.

Many of the items on this list, such as the increase in oil prices and the amount of job creation, are related to aspects of the business cycle or developments in the global economy that aren't the direct responsibility of the Bush administration. Some, such as changes in the cost of insurance and the number of people insured, are more clearly political, but are the fault of a wide array of actors and not just the Presidency. In fact, the Administration did work on the insurance problem.

The things that I like about this chart are political but I don't see them as directly related to Bush. The most important statistic, I think, is the median household income. It dropped. In 8 years, it dropped.

Thats why our economy is contracting. Because in 8 years businesses have become more productive and they have increased their value but the people who live in this country haven't benefited. The only reason they've had more money to spend is because of phony inflation of the price of their homes built upon irresponsible credit mechanisms.

I suspect a lot of the real value is moving overseas. The question is whether American growth is just going to stop until the rest of the world catches up and our workers become competitive again?

Thats going to take a long time. And I don't think its a problem that the Democrats are in a position to solve, although I suspect replacing the H1-B program with a permanent residency system would have a substantial impact.

Comment & Image Sources:
http://www.memestreams.net/users/decius/blogid10324809
http://www.dems.gov/index.asp?Type=B_PR&SEC=%7BD68CD0B2-1442-4804-9F6B-AF67DE7FF585%7D&DE=%7BFDD09C4F-E958-4E13-A92B-179C2FAC6FEA%7D&Design=PrintView
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False Pretenses

Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.


By Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith
Center for Public Integrity


President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war.

It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose "Duelfer Report" established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.

In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003. Not surprisingly, the officials with the most opportunities to make speeches, grant media interviews, and otherwise frame the public debate also made the most false statements, according to this first-ever analysis of the entire body of prewar rhetoric.

President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).

The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.

Consider, for example, these false public statements made in the run-up to war:

• On August 26, 2002, in an address to the national convention of the Veteran of Foreign Wars, Cheney flatly declared: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." In fact, former CIA Director George Tenet later recalled, Cheney's assertions went well beyond his agency's assessments at the time. Another CIA official, referring to the same speech, told journalist Ron Suskind, "Our reaction was, 'Where is he getting this stuff from?' "


• In the closing days of September 2002, with a congressional vote fast approaching on authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, Bush told the nation in his weekly radio address: "The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. . . . This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year." A few days later, similar findings were also included in a much-hurried National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction — an analysis that hadn't been done in years, as the intelligence community had deemed it unnecessary and the White House hadn't requested it.


• In July 2002, Rumsfeld had a one-word answer for reporters who asked whether Iraq had relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists: "Sure." In fact, an assessment issued that same month by the Defense Intelligence Agency (and confirmed weeks later by CIA Director Tenet) found an absence of "compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the government of Iraq and Al Qaeda." What's more, an earlier DIA assessment said that "the nature of the regime's relationship with Al Qaeda is unclear."


• On May 29, 2003, in an interview with Polish TV, President Bush declared: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories." But as journalist Bob Woodward reported in State of Denial, days earlier a team of civilian experts dispatched to examine the two mobile labs found in Iraq had concluded in a field report that the labs were not for biological weapons. The team's final report, completed the following month, concluded that the labs had probably been used to manufacture hydrogen for weather balloons.


• On January 28, 2003, in his annual State of the Union address, Bush asserted: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." Two weeks earlier, an analyst with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research sent an email to colleagues in the intelligence community laying out why he believed the uranium-purchase agreement "probably is a hoax."


• On February 5, 2003, in an address to the United Nations Security Council, Powell said: "What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources." As it turned out, however, two of the main human sources to which Powell referred had provided false information. One was an Iraqi con artist, code-named "Curveball," whom American intelligence officials were dubious about and in fact had never even spoken to. The other was an Al Qaeda detainee, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who had reportedly been sent to Eqypt by the CIA and tortured and who later recanted the information he had provided. Libi told the CIA in January 2004 that he had "decided he would fabricate any information interrogators wanted in order to gain better treatment and avoid being handed over to [a foreign government]."

The false statements dramatically increased in August 2002, with congressional consideration of a war resolution, then escalated through the mid-term elections and spiked even higher from January 2003 to the eve of the invasion.


It was during those critical weeks in early 2003 that the president delivered his State of the Union address and Powell delivered his memorable U.N. presentation. For all 935 false statements, including when and where they occurred, go to the search page for this project; the methodology used for this analysis is explained here.

In addition to their patently false pronouncements, Bush and these seven top officials also made hundreds of other statements in the two years after 9/11 in which they implied that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or links to Al Qaeda. Other administration higher-ups, joined by Pentagon officials and Republican leaders in Congress, also routinely sounded false war alarms in the Washington echo chamber.

The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war. Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, "independent" validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq.

The "ground truth" of the Iraq war itself eventually forced the president to backpedal, albeit grudgingly. In a 2004 appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, for example, Bush acknowledged that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. And on December 18, 2005, with his approval ratings on the decline, Bush told the nation in a Sunday-night address from the Oval Office: "It is true that Saddam Hussein had a history of pursuing and using weapons of mass destruction. It is true that he systematically concealed those programs, and blocked the work of U.N. weapons inspectors. It is true that many nations believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As your president, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. Yet it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power."

Bush stopped short, however, of admitting error or poor judgment; instead, his administration repeatedly attributed the stark disparity between its prewar public statements and the actual "ground truth" regarding the threat posed by Iraq to poor intelligence from a Who's Who of domestic agencies.

On the other hand, a growing number of critics, including a parade of former government officials, have publicly — and in some cases vociferously — accused the president and his inner circle of ignoring or distorting the available intelligence. In the end, these critics say, it was the calculated drumbeat of false information and public pronouncements that ultimately misled the American people and this nation's allies on their way to war.

Bush and the top officials of his administration have so far largely avoided the harsh, sustained glare of formal scrutiny about their personal responsibility for the litany of repeated, false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq. There has been no congressional investigation, for example, into what exactly was going on inside the Bush White House in that period.

Congressional oversight has focused almost entirely on the quality of the U.S. government's pre-war intelligence — not the judgment, public statements, or public accountability of its highest officials. And, of course, only four of the officials — Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz — have testified before Congress about Iraq.

Short of such review, this project provides a heretofore unavailable framework for examining how the U.S. war in Iraq came to pass. Clearly, it calls into question the repeated assertions of Bush administration officials that they were the unwitting victims of bad intelligence.

Above all, the 935 false statements painstakingly presented here finally help to answer two all-too-familiar questions as they apply to Bush and his top advisers: What did they know, and when did they know it?

The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit organization dedicated to producing original, responsible investigative journalism on issues of public concern. The Center is non-partisan and non-advocacy. We are committed to transparent and comprehensive reporting both in the United States and around the world.

Source:
http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/
________________

Twenty-five U.S. Military Officers Challenge Official Account of 9/11


By Alan Miller
OpEdNews
January 14, 2008
[Additional commentary below by request. Ed.]


Official Account of 9/11: “Impossible”, “A Bunch of Hogwash”, “Total B.S.”, “Ludicrous”, “A Well-Organized Cover-up”, “A White-Washed Farce”

Twenty-five former U.S. military officers have severely criticized the official account of 9/11 and called for a new investigation. They include former commander of U.S. Army Intelligence, Major General Albert Stubblebine, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Col. Ronald D. Ray, two former staff members of the Director of the National Security Agency; Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, PhD, and Major John M. Newman, PhD, and many others. They are among the rapidly growing number of military and intelligence service veterans, scientists, engineers, and architects challenging the government’s story. The officers’ statements appear below, listed alphabetically.

Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, PhD

“A lot of these pieces of information, taken together, prove that the official story, the official conspiracy theory of 9/11 is a bunch of hogwash. It’s impossible,” said Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, PhD, U.S. Air Force (ret). [1] With doctoral degrees in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering, Col. Bowman served as Director of Advanced Space Programs Development under Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

“There’s a second group of facts having to do with the cover up,” continued Col. Bowman. “Taken together these things prove that high levels of our government don’t want us to know what happened and who’s responsible. Who gained from 9/11? Who covered up crucial information about 9/11? And who put out the patently false stories about 9/11 in the first place? When you take those three things together, I think the case is pretty clear that it’s highly placed individuals in the administration with all roads passing through Dick Cheney.”

Regarding the failure of NORAD to intercept the four hijacked planes on 9/11, Col. Bowman said, “I'm an old interceptor pilot. I know the drill. I've done it. I know how long it takes. I know the rules. … Critics of the government story on 9/11 have said: ‘Well, they knew about this, and they did nothing’. That's not true. If our government had done nothing that day and let normal procedure be followed, those planes, wherever they were, would have been intercepted, the Twin Towers would still be standing and thousands of dead Americans would still be alive.” [2]

During his 22-year Air Force career, Col. Bowman also served as the Head of the Department of Aeronautical Engineering and Assistant Dean at the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology. He also flew over 100 combat missions in Viet Nam as a fighter pilot.

Lt. Jeff Dahlstrom

Former U.S. Air Force pilot Lt. Jeff Dahlstrom wrote in a 2007 statement to this author, “When 9/11 occurred I bought the entire government and mainstream media story line. I was a lifelong conservative Republican that voted for Bush/Cheney, twice. Curiosity about JFK’s death, after a late night TV re-run of Oliver Stone’s movie, got me started researching and digging for the truth about his assassins.

“My research led me to a much more important and timely question: the mystery of what really did happen on 9/11. Everything that seemed real, turned out to be false. The US government and the news media, once again, were lying to the world about the real terrorists and the public murder of 2,972 innocents on 9/11."

“The ‘Patriot Act’ was actually written prior to 9/11 with the intention of destroying the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. It was passed by Congress, based upon the government's myth of 9/11, which was in reality a staged hoax. 9/11 was scripted and executed by rogue elements of the military, FAA, intelligence, and private contractors working for the US government.

“In addition to severely curtailing fundamental rights of Americans, the 9/11 crime was then used by this administration, the one I originally voted for and supported, to justify waging two preemptive wars (and most likely a third war), killing over 4,500 American soldiers, and killing over one million innocent Afghan and Iraqi people.

“It was all premeditated. Treason, a false flag military operation, and betrayal of the trust of the American people were committed on 9/11 by the highest levels of the US government and not one person responsible for the crimes, or the cover-up, has been held accountable for the last six years.

“After reading fifteen well-researched books, studying eight or nine DVD documentaries, and devoting months of personal research and investigation, I have arrived at one ultimate conclusion: The American government and the US Constitution have been hijacked and subverted by a group of criminals that today are the real terrorists. They are in control of the US government and they have all violated their oaths of office and committed treason against their own citizens.”

Capt. Daniel Davis

Capt. Daniel Davis is a former U.S. Army Air Defense Officer and NORAD Tac Director. After his military service, Capt. Davis served for 15 years as a Senior Manager at General Electric Turbine (jet) Engine Division and then devoted an additional 15 years as founder and CEO of Turbine Technology Services Corp., a turbine (jet engine) services and maintenance company.

In a statement to this author, Capt. Davis wrote, “As a former General Electric Turbine engineering specialist and manager and then CEO of a turbine engineering company, I can guarantee that none of the high tech, high temperature alloy engines on any of the four planes that crashed on 9/11 would be completely destroyed, burned, shattered or melted in any crash or fire. Wrecked, yes, but not destroyed. Where are all of those engines, particularly at the Pentagon? If jet powered aircraft crashed on 9/11, those engines, plus wings and tail assembly, would be there.”

Decorated with the Bronze Star and the Soldiers Medal for bravery under fire and the Purple Heart for injuries sustained in Viet Nam, Capt. Davis also served in the Army Air Defense Command as Nike Missile Battery Control Officer for the Chicago-Milwaukee Defense Area.

Capt. Davis continued, “Additionally, in my experience as an officer in NORAD as a Tactical Director for the Chicago-Milwaukee Air Defense and as a current private pilot, there is no way that an aircraft on instrument flight plans (all commercial flights are IFR) would not be intercepted when they deviate from their flight plan, turn off their transponders, or stop communication with Air Traffic Control. No way! With very bad luck, perhaps one could slip by, but no there's no way all four of them could!

“Finally, going over the hill and highway and crashing into the Pentagon right at the wall/ground interface is difficult for even a small slow single engine airplane and no way for a 757. Maybe the best pilot in the world could accomplish that but not these unskilled ‘terrorists’. Attempts to obscure facts by calling them a ‘Conspiracy Theory’ does not change the truth. It seems, ‘Something is rotten in the State’.”

Major Jon I. Fox

Major Jon I. Fox is a former U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot and a retired commercial airline pilot for Continental Airlines with a 35-year commercial aviation career. In 2007, in support of the Architects and Engineers[3] petition to reinvestigate 9/11, he wrote, “On hearing the military (NORAD/NEAD) excuses for no intercepts on 9/11/2001, I knew from personal experience that they were lying. I then began re-checking other evidence and found mostly more lies from the ‘official spokesmen’. Jet fuel fires at atmospheric pressure do not get hot enough to weaken steel. Structures do not collapse through themselves in free fall time with only gravity as the powering force.” [4]

Commander Ralph Kolstad

Retired U.S. Navy ‘Top Gun’ pilot Commander Ralph Kolstad started questioning the official account of 9/11 within days of the event. In a statement to this author, he wrote, “It just didn’t make any sense to me,” he said. And now six years after 9/11 he says, “When one starts using his own mind, and not what one was told, there is very little to believe in the official story.” [5]

Commander Kolstad was a top-rated fighter pilot during his 20-year Navy career. Early in his career, he was accorded the honor of being selected to participate in the Navy’s ‘Top Gun’ air combat school, officially known as the U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School. The Tom Cruise movie “Top Gun” reflects the experience of the young Navy pilots at the school. Eleven years later, Commander Kolstad was further honored by being selected to become a ‘Top Gun’ adversary instructor.

Commander Kolstad had a second career after his 20 years of Navy active and reserve service and served as a commercial airline pilot for 27 years, flying for American Airlines and other domestic and international careers. He flew Boeing 727, 757 and 767, McDonnell Douglas MD-80, and Fokker F-100 airliners. He has flown a total of over 23,000 hours in his career.

Commander Kolstad is especially critical of the account of American Airlines Flight 77 that allegedly crashed into the Pentagon. He says, “At the Pentagon, the pilot of the Boeing 757 did quite a feat of flying. I have 6,000 hours of flight time in Boeing 757’s and 767’s and I could not have flown it the way the flight path was described.”

Commander Kolstad adds, “I was also a Navy fighter pilot and Air Combat Instructor and have experience flying low altitude, high speed aircraft. I could not have done what these beginners did. Something stinks to high heaven!”

He points to the physical evidence at the Pentagon impact site and asks in exasperation, “Where is the damage to the wall of the Pentagon from the wings? Where are the big pieces that always break away in an accident? Where is all the luggage? Where are the miles and miles of wire, cable, and lines that are part and parcel of any large aircraft? Where are the steel engine parts? Where is the steel landing gear? Where is the tail section that would have broken into large pieces?”

But no major element of the official account of 9/11 is spared from Commander Kolstad’s criticism. Regarding the alleged impact site of United Airlines Flight 93 near Shanksville, PA, he asks, “Where is any of the wreckage? Of all the pictures I have seen, there is only a hole! Where is any piece of a crashed airplane? Why was the area cordoned off, and no inspection allowed by the normal accident personnel? Where is any evidence at all?”

Commander Kolstad also questions many aspects of the attack on the World Trade Center.

“How could a steel and concrete building collapse after being hit by a Boeing 767? Didn’t the engineers design it to withstand a direct hit from a Boeing 707, approximately the same size and weight of the 767? The evidence just doesn’t add up.”

“Why did the second building collapse before the first one, which had been burning for 20 minutes longer after a direct hit, especially when the second one hit was just a glancing blow? If the fire was so hot, then why were people looking out the windows [6] and in the destroyed areas? Why have so many members of the New York Fire Department reported seeing or hearing many ‘explosions’ before the buildings collapsed?”

Commander Kolstad summarized his frustration with the investigation and disbelief of the official account of 9/11, “If one were to act as an accident investigator, one would look at the evidence, and then construct a plausible scenario as to what led to the accident. In this case, we were told the story and then the evidence was built to support the story. What happened to any intelligent investigation? Every question leads to another question that has not been answered by anyone in authority. This is just the beginning as to why I don’t believe the official ‘story’ and why I want the truth to be told.”

Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski

A Pentagon eye-witness and a former member of the staff of the Director of the National Security Agency, Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, PhD, U.S. Air Force (ret), is a severe critic of the official account of 9/11. A contributing author to the 2006 book 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, she wrote, “I believe the [9/11] Commission failed to deeply examine the topic at hand, failed to apply scientific rigor to its assessment of events leading up to and including 9/11, failed to produce a believable and unbiased summary of what happened, failed to fully examine why it happened, and even failed to include a set of unanswered questions for future research.”

She continued, “It is as a scientist that I have the most trouble with the official government conspiracy theory, mainly because it does not satisfy the rules of probability or physics. The collapses of the World Trade Center buildings clearly violate the laws of probability and physics.”

Col. Kwiatkowski was working in the Pentagon on 9/11 in her capacity as Political-Military Affairs Officer in the Office of the Secretary of Defense when Flight 77 allegedly hit the Pentagon. She wrote, “There was a dearth of visible debris on the relatively unmarked lawn, where I stood only minutes after the impact. Beyond this strange absence of airliner debris, there was no sign of the kind of damage to the Pentagon structure one would expect from the impact of a large airliner. This visible evidence or lack thereof may also have been apparent to the Secretary of Defense [Donald Rumsfeld], who in an unfortunate slip of the tongue referred to the aircraft that slammed into the Pentagon as a ‘missile.’ [7] [Secretary Rumsfeld also publicly referred to Flight 93 as the plane that was "shot down" over Pennsylvania.[8] ]

“I saw nothing of significance at the point of impact - no airplane metal or cargo debris was blowing on the lawn in front of the damaged building as smoke billowed from within the Pentagon. ... [A]ll of us staring at the Pentagon that morning were indeed looking for such debris, but what we expected to see was not evident.

“The same is true with regard to the kind of damage we expected. ... But I did not see this kind of damage. Rather, the facade had a rather small hole, no larger than 20 feet in diameter. Although this facade later collapsed, it remained standing for 30 or 40 minutes, with the roof line remaining relatively straight.

“The scene, in short, was not what I would have expected from a strike by a large jetliner. It was, however, exactly what one would expect if a missile had struck the Pentagon. ... More information is certainly needed regarding the events of 9/11 and the events leading up to that terrible day.”

The improbability of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 is a major concern of these officers and a growing number of scientists, engineers and architects. The building was 610 feet tall, 47 stories, and would have been the tallest building in 33 states. Although it was not hit by an airplane, it completely collapsed into a pile of rubble in less than 7 seconds at 5:20 p.m. on 9/11.

n the 6 years since 9/11, the Federal government has failed to provide any explanation for the collapse. In addition to the failure to provide an explanation, absolutely no mention of Building 7’s collapse appears in the 9/11 Commission's “full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.” [Video of the collapse can be seen at http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/WTC7_Collapse.wmv ]

Lt. Col. Shelton Lankford

Lt. Col. Shelton Lankford, U.S. Marine Corps (ret), an attack pilot with over 300 combat missions, wrote in 2007 to the Michigan Daily,[9] “Our government has been hijacked by means of a ‘new Pearl Harbor’ and a lot of otherwise good and decent people who are gullible enough to think that the first three steel-framed buildings in history fall down because they have some fires that the fire fighter on the scene said could be knocked down with a couple of hoses and through which people walked before they were photographed looking out the holes [10] where the plane hit. One of these, Building 7, was never hit by a plane and even NIST is ashamed to advance a reason for its collapse. And, miracle of miracles, these three buildings just happened to be leased and insured by the same guy who is on tape [11] saying they decided to ‘PULL’ the last one to fall.”

During his 20 year military career, Col. Lankford's decorations include the Distinguished Flying Cross, and 32 awards of the Air Medal.In a statement to this author, Col. Lankford wrote, “September 11, 2001 seems destined to be the watershed event of our lives and the greatest test for our democracy in our lifetimes.

The evidence of government complicity in the lead-up to the events, the failure to respond during the event, and the astounding lack of any meaningful investigation afterwards, as well as the ignoring of evidence turned up by others that renders the official explanation impossible, may signal the end of the American experiment.

It has been used to justify all manners of measures to legalize repression at home and as a pretext for behaving as an aggressive empire abroad. Until we demand an independent, honest, and thorough investigation and accountability for those whose action and inaction led to those events and the cover-up, our republic and our Constitution remain in the gravest danger.”

Lt. Col. Jeff Latas

Another harsh critic of the official account of 9/11 is Lt. Col. Jeff Latas, U.S. Air Force (ret). A former combat fighter pilot, Col. Latas is currently a commercial airline pilot. Col. Latas is a member of Pilots for 9/11 Truth. In 2007 he was interviewed by the group’s founder, commercial airline pilot, Rob Balsamo,[12] regarding the group’s documentary video, Pandora's Black Box, Chapter 2, Flight of American 77, [13] which focuses on the 9/11 Commission's account of the impact of Flight 77 at the Pentagon and discrepancies with the data from the Flight Data Recorder alleged by the NTSB to be from Flight 77.

In the interview, Col. Latas said, “After I did my own analysis of it, it's obvious that there's discrepancies between the two stories; between the 9/11 Commission and the flight data recorder information. And I think that's where we really need to focus a lot of our attention to get the help that we need in order to put pressure on government agencies to actually do a real investigation of 9/11. And not just from a security standpoint, but from even an aviation standpoint, like any accident investigation would actually help the aviators out by finding reasons for things happening.”

A highly decorated fighter pilot, Col. Latas was awarded the Distinguish Flying Cross for Heroism, four Air Medals, four Meritorious Service Medals, and nine Aerial Achievement Medals. His combat experience includes Desert Storm and four tours of duty in Northern and Southern Watch. During his 20-year Air Force career, he also served as Pentagon Weapons Requirement Officer, as a member of the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, and as President, U.S. Air Force Accident Investigation Board.

Col. Latas concluded, “And I think that we Americans need to demand further investigation just to clarify the discrepancies that you've [Pilots for 9/11 Truth] found. And I think that we need to be getting on the phone with our Congressmen and women and letting them know that we don't accept the excuses that we're hearing now, that we want true investigators to do a true investigation.”

Capt. Eric H. May

Capt. Eric H. May, U.S. Army (ret), is a former Army Intelligence Officer who also served as an inspector and interpreter for the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty team. He is one of many signers of a petition [14] requesting a reinvestigation of 9/11. In 2005, he wrote: “As a former Army officer, my tendency immediately after 911 was to rally 'round the colors and defend the country against what I then thought was an insidious, malicious all-Arab entity called Al-Qaida. In fact, in April of 2002, I attempted to reactivate my then-retired commission to return to serve my country in its time of peril. ...

Now I view the 911 event as Professor David Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor, views it: as a matter that implies either

A) passive participation by the Bush White House through a deliberate stand-down of proper defense procedures that (if followed) would have led US air assets to a quick identification and confrontation of the passenger aircraft that impacted WTC 1 and WTC 2, or worse ...

B) active execution of a plot by rogue elements of government, starting with the White House itself, in creating a spectacle of destruction that would lead the United States into an invasion of the Middle East ...” [15]

Capt. John Spooner (GT/XO)
[Capt. Spooners comments added by request. News2U Ed.]

During my career in the Army Air Corp and USAF, 1944-1965, I was in the Aircraft Maintenance Career Field. (20 years on active duty from a Private to Captain.) What happened in New York, Pennsylvania and the Pentagon were crimes, not an invasive attack. The towers and building 7 and the Pentagon were not demolished buy air liners. The airliner that made the hole in the pasture was rendered uncontrollable either by a bomb or rocket according to what I read about witness testimony by 15 witnesses who were never queried by investigators or included in the Commission Report. There were no airliner parts at the Pentagon scene. The FBI and probably the Defense Department have videos of what hit the pentagon probably a UAV and has destroyed the evidence to prevent the truth from being revealed to the public.

Included in the omission in the Report is the name of A.B. "Buzzy"Krongard" a CIA Executive Officer that executed $2.5 million in "PUTs" on UA and AA Stock. A person name Dov Zakheim, a Pentagon Comptroller who retired in 2003 and returned to Israel had a reported $4.2 billion discrepancy in the Fund he maintained and was responsible for. The media did report a couple of weeks later that instead of $4.2 billion it was only $2.4 billion. (.4 million is an approximation as I do no have the exact figure available.

There should also be some questions about having building 7 wired for demolition with people occupying the building. Were the police or the fire department aware of this? How about the towers that appeared to come straight down as though they were wired for demolition. Larry Silverstein admitted publicly that he ordered Building 7 "pulled". Interestingly there has been no discussion about what started the fire in Building 7 which housed the NY City Emergency Command Post on the 7th floor.

The American Free Press has a center fold with 50 questions that should be answered by officials under oath. The initiation to reopen the investigation should be made by a Grand Jury, not government officials who have and interest or can influence any members of the Jury. There are a lot more questions and answers that need to be asked and answered truthfully and factually.

Commander Ted Muga

Commander Ted Muga, U.S. Navy (ret), is a Navy aviator, who, after retirement, had a second career as a commercial airline pilot for Pan-Am.In a 2007 interview on the Alex Jones Show, [16] Commander Muga stated, “The maneuver at the Pentagon was just a tight spiral coming down out of 7,000 feet. And a commercial aircraft, while they can in fact structurally somewhat handle that maneuver, they are very, very, very difficult. And it would take considerable training.

In other words, commercial aircraft are designed for a particular purpose and that is for comfort and for passengers and it's not for military maneuvers. And while they are structurally capable of doing them, it takes some very, very talented pilots to do that. ... I just can't imagine an amateur even being able to come close to performing a maneuver of that nature.

“And as far as hijacking the airplanes, once again getting back to the nature of pilots and airplanes, there is no way that a pilot would give up an airplane to hijackers. ... I mean, hell, a guy doesn't give up a TV remote control much less a complicated 757. And so to think that pilots would allow a plane to be taken over by a couple of 5 foot 7, 150 pound guys with a one-inch blade boxcutter is ridiculous.

“And also in all four planes, if you remember, none of the planes ever switched on their transponder to the hijack code. There's a very, very simple code that you put in if you suspect that your plane is being hijacked. It takes literally just a split-second for you to put your hand down on the center console and flip it over. And not one of the four planes ever transponded a hijack code, which is most, most unusual. ...

“Commercial airplanes are very, very complex pieces of machines. And they're designed for two pilots up there, not just two amateur pilots, but two qualified commercial pilots up there. And to think that you're going to get an amateur up into the cockpit and fly, much less navigate, it to a designated target, the probability is so low, that it's bordering on impossible.”

Col. George Nelson

“In all my years of direct and indirect participation, I never witnessed nor even heard of an aircraft loss, where the wreckage was accessible, that prevented investigators from finding enough hard evidence to positively identify the make, model, and specific registration number of the aircraft -- and in most cases the precise cause of the accident,” wrote Col. George Nelson, MBA, U.S. Air Force (ret), a former U.S. Air Force aircraft accident investigator and airplane parts authority. [17]

“The government alleges that four wide-body airliners crashed on the morning of September 11 2001, resulting in the deaths of more than 3,000 human beings, yet not one piece of hard aircraft evidence has been produced in an attempt to positively identify any of the four aircraft. On the contrary, it seems only that all potential evidence was deliberately kept hidden from public view,” continued Col. Nelson, a graduate of the U.S. Air Force War College and a 34-year Air Force veteran.

“With all the evidence readily available at the Pentagon crash site, any unbiased rational investigator could only conclude that a Boeing 757 did not fly into the Pentagon as alleged. Similarly, with all the evidence available at the Pennsylvania crash site, it was most doubtful that a passenger airliner caused the obvious hole in the ground and certainly not the Boeing 757 as alleged. …

“As painful and heartbreaking as was the loss of innocent lives and the lingering health problems of thousands more, a most troublesome and nightmarish probability remains that so many Americans appear to be involved in the most heinous conspiracy in our country's history.”

Maj. John M. Newman, PhD

Maj. John M. Newman, PhD, U.S. Army (ret), is the former Executive Assistant to the Director of the National Security Agency. In testimony before a 2005 Congressional briefing, he said, “It falls to me this morning to bring to your attention the story of Saeed Sheikh, whose full name is Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, and his astonishing rise to power in Al Qaeda, his crucial role in 9/11, which is completely, utterly, missing from the 9/11 Commission report…

“The 9/11 Commission which studied US intelligence and law enforcement community performance in great detail, (maybe not so much great detail, but they did), neglected to cover the community’s performance during the weeks following the attacks to determine who was responsible for them, not a word about that in the Report.

“The Report does discuss the immediate US responses but the immediate investigation is never addressed, and anyone who has closely studied the post-9/11 investigation knows that the first breakthrough came two weeks into the investigation when the money transfers from the United Arab Emirates to the hijackers were uncovered.

“Furthermore, if you have studied that investigation, you know there is no disputing that while investigators may have struggled with the identity of the paymaster, they were clear about one thing, he was Al Qaeda’s finance chief. For this reason alone you have to ask why the 9/11 Commission Report never mentions the finance chief’s role as the 9/11 paymaster.” [18]

Capt. Omar Pradhan

Capt. Omar Pradhan, U.S. Air Force, is a former AWACS command pilot and Flight Instructor at the U.S. Air Force Academy. In a 2007 statement to this author, Capt. Pradhan wrote, “As a proud American, as a distinguished USAF E-3 AWACS Aircraft Commander (with 350+ hours of combat time logged over Afghanistan and Iraq), and as a former U.S. Air Force Academy Flight Instructor, I warmly endorse the professional inquiry and pursuit of comprehensive truth sought by the Pilots for 911 Truth organization and the PatriotsQuestion911 website.”

Col. Ronald D. Ray

Another senior officer questioning the official account of 9/11 is Col. Ronald D. Ray, U.S. Marine Corps (ret), Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan. A highly decorated Vietnam veteran (two Silver Stars, a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart), he was appointed by President George H. W. Bush to serve on the American Battle Monuments Commission (1990 – 1994), and the 1992 Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces. He was Military Historian and Deputy Director of Field Operations for the U.S. Marine Corps Historical Center, Washington, D.C. (1990 – 1994).

In an interview on Alex Jones’ radio show on June 30, 2006 [19], Col. Ray described the official account of 9/11 as “the dog that doesn’t hunt”, meaning it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. In response to Alex Jones’ question, “Is it safe to say or is the statement accurate that you smell something rotten in the state of Denmark when it comes to 9/11?” Col. Ray replied,“I'm astounded that the conspiracy theory advanced by the administration could in fact be true and the evidence does not seem to suggest that that's accurate. That's true.”

Lt. Col. Guy S. Razer

“After 4+ years of research since retirement in 2002, I am 100% convinced that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were planned, organized, and committed by treasonous perpetrators that have infiltrated the highest levels of our government. It is now time to take our country back,” wrote Lt. Col. Guy S. Razer, MS, U.S. Air Force (ret), in a statement to this author.

A retired fighter pilot, Col. Razer served as an instructor at the U.S. Air Force Fighter Weapons School and NATO’s Tactical Leadership Program and flew combat missions over Iraq. He continued, “The ‘collapse’ of WTC Building 7 shows beyond any doubt that the demolitions were pre-planned. There is simply no way to demolish a 47-story building (on fire) over a coffee break. It is also impossible to report the building’s collapse before it happened, as BBC News did,[20] unless it was pre-planned. Further damning evidence is Larry Silverstein's video taped confession in which he states ‘they made that decision to pull [WTC 7] and we watched the building collapse.’[21]

“We cannot let the pursuit of justice fail. Those of us in the military took an oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic’. Just because we have retired does not make that oath invalid, so it is not just our responsibility, it is our duty to expose the real perpetrators of 9/11 and bring them to justice, no matter how hard it is, how long it takes, or how much we have to suffer to do it,” he concluded.

Maj. Scott Ritter

Maj. Scott Ritter, U.S. Marine Corps, is a former Marine Corps Intelligence Officer who also served as Chief Weapons Inspector for the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq 1991 - 1998. In 2005, he said: “I, like the others, are frustrated by the 9/11 Commission Report, by the lack of transparency on the part of the United States government, both in terms of the executive branch and the legislative branch when it comes to putting out on the table all facts known to the 9/11 case.” [22]

Maj. Douglas Rokke, PhD

Maj. Douglas Rokke, PhD, U.S. Army (ret), former Director of the U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project and 30-year veteran, had this to say about the explosion at the Pentagon on 9/11, “When you look at the whole thing, especially the crash site void of airplane parts, the size of the hole left in the building and the fact the projectile's impact penetrated numerous concrete walls, it looks like the work of a missile. And when you look at the damage, it was obviously a missile.” [23]

The 9/11 Commission Report asserts that only three of the alleged hijackers were known to U.S. intelligence agencies prior to 9/11: Nawaf al-Hazmi, Salem al-Hazmi, and Khalid al-Mihdar.

There is no mention in the Report that the names and photographs of alleged hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi and alleged ring-leader Mohamed Atta had been identified by the Department of Defense anti-terrorist program known as Able Danger more than a year prior to 9/11 and that they were known to be affiliates of al-Qaida. Able Danger also identified Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdar.

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee in 2006 [24], Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, U.S. Army Reserve, former Chief of the Army’s Controlled HUMINT (Human Intelligence) Program, overseeing Army Intelligence and Security Command’s global controlled HUMINT efforts, stated: “[B]asic law enforcement investigative techniques, with 21st Century data mining and analytical tools ... resulted in the establishment of a new form of intelligence collection – and the identification of Mohammed Atta and several other of the 9-11 terrorists as having links to Al Qaeda leadership a full year in advance of the attacks. ...

“After contact by two separate members of the ABLE DANGER team, … the 9-11 [Commission] staff refused to perform any in-depth review or investigation of the issues that were identified to them. … It was their job to do a thorough investigation of these claims – to not simply dismiss them based on what many now believe was a ‘preconceived’ conclusion to the 9-11 story they wished to tell. … I consider this a failure of the 9-11 staff – a failure that the 9-11 Commissioners themselves were victimized by – and continue to have perpetrated on them by the staff as is evidenced by their recent, groundless conclusion that ABLE DANGER’s findings were ‘urban legend’.”

A 23-year military intelligence veteran, Col. Shaffer was recently awarded the Bronze Star for bravery in Afghanistan. In a 2005 interview on Fox News, Col Shaffer asked, “Why did this operation, which was created in '99 to target Al Qaeda globally, offensively, why was that turned off in the Spring of 2001, four months before we were attacked? I can't answer that, either. I can tell you I was ordered out of the operation directly by a two-star general.” [25]

Capt. Scott J. Phillpott

Supporting Col. Shaffer’s statement, Capt. Scott J. Phillpott, U.S. Navy, currently Commanding Officer of the guided-missile cruiser USS Leyte Gulf and former head of the Able Danger data mining program, stated in 2005: “I will not discuss this outside of my chain of command. I have briefed the Department of the Army, the Special Operations Command and the office of (Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence) Dr. Cambone as well as the 9/11 Commission. My story has remained consistent. Atta was identified by Able Danger in January/February 2000.” [26]

Capt. Phillpott is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, who during his 23 years of Navy service has been awarded the Legion of Merit, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, three Meritorious Service Medals, the Joint Service Commendation Medal, two Navy Commendation Medals, and the Navy Achievement Medal.

Joel Skousen

Former U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot Joel M. Skousen also questions the official account of 9/11. After his military service, Mr. Skousen served as Chairman of the Conservative National Committee in Washington DC and Executive Editor of Conservative Digest.

“In the March 2005 issue, PM [Popular Mechanics] magazine singled out 16 issues or claims of the 9/11 skeptics that point to government collusion and systematically attempted to debunk each one. Of the 16, most missed the mark and almost half were straw men arguments - either ridiculous arguments that few conspiracists believed or restatements of the arguments that were highly distorted so as to make them look weaker than they really were. ...

“I am one of those who claim there are factual arguments pointing to conspiracy, and that truth is not served by taking cheap shots at those who see gaping flaws in the government story ... There is significant evidence that the aircraft impacts did not cause the collapse [of the Twin Towers] ...

The issues of the penetration hole [at the Pentagon] and the lack of large pieces of debris simply do not jive with the official story, but they are explainable if you include the parking lot video evidence that shows a huge white explosion at impact. This cannot happen with an aircraft laden only with fuel. It can only happen in the presence of high explosives.” [27]

Gen. Albert Stubblebine

Major General Albert Stubblebine, U.S. Army (ret), former Commanding General of U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), is a strong critic of the official account of 9/11. In a 2006 video documentary he said, “One of my experiences in the Army was being in charge of the Army’s Imagery Interpretation for Scientific and Technical Intelligence during the Cold War. I measured pieces of Soviet equipment from photographs. It was my job. I look at the hole in the Pentagon and I look at the size of an airplane that was supposed to have hit the Pentagon. And I said, ‘The plane does not fit in that hole’. So what did hit the Pentagon? What hit it? Where is it? What's going on?” [28]

During his 32-year Army career, Gen. Stubblebine also commanded the U.S. Army’s Electronic Research and Development Command and the U.S. Army’s Intelligence School and Center. Gen. Stubblebine is one of the inductees into the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame. [29]

Col. James R. Uhl

“There is a well-organized cover-up of the events of 11 Sep 2001. The 9/11 Commission was a white-washed farce. There is evidence that US Government officials had advance knowledge of and are probably implicated in the events of 9/11,” wrote retired military physician, Col. James R. Uhl, MD, U.S. Army (ret), in a statement to this author.

“A huge body of physical evidence has been ignored, suppressed, and ridiculed by the media and by our Government. Why did WTC 7 collapse? It was never hit by an airplane and was apparently brought down by explosives. How could Al-Qaida terrorists have had access and time to plant bombs in a top secret installation? Why did the 9/11 Commission fail to seek the reason for the WTC 7 collapse?” continued Col. Uhl, a 38-year Army veteran, who served in several theaters of operations, from Viet Nam through Iraq.

Capt. Russ Wittenberg

Capt. Russ Wittenberg, U.S. Air Force, is a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot with over 100 combat missions and a retired commercial pilot, who flew for Pan Am and United Airlines for 35 years.

According to Capt. Wittenberg, “The government story they handed us about 9/11 is total B.S., plain and simple.”[30]

In the 2007 documentary video, 9/11 Ripple Effect,[31] he said “I flew the two actual aircraft which were involved in 9/11; the Fight number 175 and Flight 93, the 757 that allegedly went down in Shanksville and Flight 175 is the aircraft that's alleged to have hit the South Tower.

“I don't believe it's possible for, like I said, for a terrorist, a so-called terrorist, to train on a [Cessna] 172, then jump in a cockpit of a 757-767 class cockpit, and vertical navigate the aircraft, lateral navigate the aircraft, and fly the airplane at speeds exceeding its design limit speed by well over 100 knots, make high-speed high-banked turns, exceeding -- pulling probably 5, 6, 7 G's. And the aircraft would literally fall out of the sky. I couldn't do it and I'm absolutely positive they couldn't do it.” [32]

Regarding Flight 77, which allegedly hit the Pentagon, Capt. Wittenberg said, ”The airplane could not have flown at those speeds which they said it did without going into what they call a high speed stall. The airplane won’t go that fast if you start pulling those high G maneuvers at those bank angles. … To expect this alleged airplane to run these maneuvers with a total amateur at the controls is simply ludicrous ... It’s roughly a 100 ton airplane. And an airplane that weighs 100 tons all assembled is still going to have 100 tons of disassembled trash and parts after it hits a building. There was no wreckage from a 757 at the Pentagon. … The vehicle that hit the Pentagon was not Flight 77. We think, as you may have heard before, it was a cruise missile.”[33]

Col. Ann Wright

Another senior officer questioning the official account of 9/11 is Col. Ann Wright, U.S. Army (ret), who said in a 2007 interview with Richard Greene on the Air America Radio Network, “It's incredible some of these things that still are unanswered. The 9/11 Report -- that was totally inadequate. I mean the questions that anybody has after reading that.” [34]

Col. Wright is one of three U.S. State Department officials to publicly resign in direct protest of the invasion of Iraq in March, 2003. She served for 13 years on active duty and 16 additional years on reserve duty in the U.S. Army. She joined the Foreign Service in 1987 and served for 16 years as a U.S. Diplomat. She served as Deputy Chief of Mission of U.S. Embassies in Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Afghanistan and she helped reopen the U.S. Embassy in Kabul in December, 2001.

She continued in her interview: “How could our national intelligence and defense operations be so inept that they could not communicate; that they could not scramble jets; that they could not take defensive action? And I totally agree. I always thought the Pentagon had all sorts of air defense sort of equipment around it; that they could take out anything that was coming at it. And for a plane to be able to just fly low right over Washington and slam into that thing is just -- I mean, you still just shake your head. How in the world could that happen?”

Capt. Gregory Zeigler

Capt. Gregory M. Zeigler, PhD, is a former U.S. Army Intelligence Officer. In a 2006 statement to this author, Capt. Zeigler wrote, “I knew from September 18, 2001, that the official story about 9/11 was false. That was when I realized that the perpetrators had made a colossal blunder in collapsing the South Tower first, rather than the North Tower, which had been hit more directly and earlier.

“Other anomalies poured in rapidly: the hijackers' names appearing in none of the published flight passenger lists, BBC reports of stolen identities of the alleged hijackers or the alleged hijackers being found alive, the obvious demolitions of WTC 1 and 2 and WTC 7, the lack of identifiable Boeing 757 wreckage at the Pentagon, the impossibility of ordinary cell phone (as opposed to Airfone) calls being made consistently from passenger aircraft at cruising altitude, etc., etc., etc.”

Shortly after the release of the 9/11 Commission Report, a group of over 100 prominent Americans signed a petition [35] urging Congress to immediately reinvestigate 9/11. In addition to two former senior CIA officials [36] and several U.S. State Department veterans, [37] the signers included Lt. Col. Robert Bowman and Capt. Eric H. May, both mentioned above.

The petition stated, in part, “We want truthful answers to questions such as:

1. Why were standard operating procedures for dealing with hijacked airliners not followed that day?

2. Why were the extensive missile batteries and air defenses reportedly deployed around the Pentagon not activated during the attack?

3. Why did the Secret Service allow Bush to complete his elementary school visit, apparently unconcerned about his safety or that of the schoolchildren?

4. Why hasn't a single person been fired, penalized, or reprimanded for the gross incompetence we witnessed that day?

5. Why haven't authorities in the U.S. and abroad published the results of multiple investigations into trading that strongly suggested foreknowledge of specific details of the 9/11 attacks, resulting in tens of millions of dollars of traceable gains?”

These questions and many others still remain unanswered three years after the petition was submitted and six years after the terrible events of 9/11. As the statements of these twenty-five former U.S. military officers demonstrate, the need for a new thorough, and independent investigation of 9/11 is not a matter of partisan politics, nor the demand of irresponsible, deranged, or disloyal Americans. It is instead a matter of the utmost importance for America’s security and the future of the entire world.

Statements questioning the official account of 9/11 and calls for a new investigation by more than 800 credible individuals can be found at http://patriotsquestion911.com/

Additional information about prominent skeptics of the official account of 9/11 can be found in the author's other articles on this subject, listed below.

Jan. 5, 2008 - Eight U.S. State Department Veterans Challenge Official Account of 9/11 - Official Account of 9/11: “Flawed”, “Absurd”, “Totally Inadequate”, “a Cover-up” featured statements by:

• Daniel Ellsberg, PhD, former U.S. State Department envoy to Viet Nam and Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense

• Col. Ann Wright, former Deputy Chief of Mission of U.S. Embassies in Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Afghanistan. 16 years as U.S. Diplomat. 29-year U.S. Army career.

• Fred Burks, former simultaneous interpreter for President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and others. 18-year State Department career

• Melvin Goodman, PhD, former Senior Analyst, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, State Department. Later served as Division Chief, CIA’s Office of Soviet Affairs and Professor of International Security, National War College

• Michael Springmann, retired career Foreign Service Officer. Former Consular Officer in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. 20-year career with the State Department and the International Foreign Trade Administration, Commerce Department

• George Kenney, former career Foreign Service Officer. Served as Yugoslav desk officer at the State Department headquarters.

• Michael Mennard, PhD, retired career Foreign Service Officer. Served as Regional Public Affairs Officer in India

• Edward Peck, former Deputy Coordinator, Covert Intelligence Programs, U.S. State Department. Later served as Deputy Director of the White House Task Force on Terrorism under President Ronald Reagan. Former U.S. Ambassador and Chief of Mission in Iraq

Dec. 13, 2007 - Seven Senior Federal Engineers and Scientists Call for New 9/11 Investigation - Official Account of 9/11: “Impossible”, “A Bunch of Hogwash”, “Fatally Flawed” featured statements by:

• Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, PhD, Director of Advanced Space Programs Development under Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Former Head of the Department of Aeronautical Engineering and Assistant Dean at the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology

• David Griscom, PhD, Retired Research Physicist. Served 33 years at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.
  
• Joel Hirschhorn, PhD, Former Senior Staff Member, Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. Former Director of Environment, Energy and Natural Resources for the National Governors Association
  
• Enver Masud, MS, PE, Former Chief of the Strategic and Emergency Planning Branch, U.S. Department of Energy
  
• James Quintiere, PhD, Former Chief of the Fire Science Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
  
• Dwain Deets, MS, Former Director, Aerospace Projects at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center
  
• Edward S. Munyak, MS, PE, Former Fire Protection Engineer for the U.S. Departments of Energy, Defense, and Veterans Affairs. Contributing Subject Matter Expert to the U.S. Department of Energy Fire Protection Engineering Functional Area Qualification Standard for Nuclear Facilities

Dec. 4, 2007 - Eight Senior Republican Appointees Challenge Official Account of 9/11 - “Not Possible”, “a Whitewash”, “False” featured statements by

• Paul Craig Roberts, PhD, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Ronald Reagan
  
• Catherine Austin Fitts, Assistant Secretary of Housing under President George H.W. Bush
  
• Morgan Reynolds, PhD, Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor under current President George W. Bush
  
• Col. Ronald D. Ray, U.S. Marine Corps (ret), Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan
  
• Mary Schiavo, JD, Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Transportation under Presidents George H.W. Bush and William Clinton
  
• Barbara Honegger, Special Assistant to the Chief Domestic Policy Adviser to President Ronald Reagan and White House Policy Analyst
  
• Edward Peck, Deputy Director of the White House Task Force on Terrorism under President Ronald Reagan. Former Deputy Coordinator, Covert Intelligence Programs at the U.S. State Department. Former U.S. Ambassador and Chief of Mission in Iraq
  
• Morton Goulder, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Warning under Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter

Sept. 23, 2007 - Seven CIA Veterans Challenge 9/11 Commission Report - Official Account of 9/11 a “Joke” and a “Cover-up” featured statements by CIA veterans Raymond McGovern, William Christison, Melvin Goodman, Robert Baer, Robert David Steele, Lynne Larkin, and David MacMichael.

Sept. 5, 2007 - U.S. Navy 'Top Gun' Pilot Questions 9/11, featured the statement of Commander Ralph Kolstad, U.S. Navy ‘Top Gun’ pilot.

Sept. 4, 2007 - Former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment Senior Staff Member Calls for New Investigation of 9/11 featured the statement of Joel S. Hirschhorn, Ph.D., who served for 12 years as a Senior Staff Member of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and later as Director of Environment, Energy and Natural Resources for the National Governors Association.

Aug. 27, 2007 - National Academy of Sciences Member Calls for New 9/11 Investigation featured the statement of Lynn Margulis, Ph.D., world renowned scientist.

Aug. 21, 2007 - Former Chief of NIST's Fire Science Division Calls for Independent Review of World Trade Center Investigation featured the statement of James Quintiere, Ph.D., one of the world's leading fire science researchers.

July 16, 2007 - Former California Seismic Safety Commissioner Endorses 9/11 Truth Movement featured the statement of J. Marx Ayres, former member of the National Institute of Sciences Building Safety Council and former member of the California Seismic Safety Commission.

Endnotes
[1] Video of speech by Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, PhD Sept. 11, 2004 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6900065571556128674

[2] Video of speech by Lt. Col. Robert Bowman at the American Scholars Symposium: 9/11 and the Neo-Con Agenda June 25, 2006 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKoqEQ7hb_4

[3] Architects and Engineers Petition to Reinvestigate 9/11 Signed by More Than 230 Architects and Engineers 2007 http://www.ae911truth.org/joinus.php

[4] Statement by Maj. Jon Fox in support of Architects and Engineers petition 2007 http://www.ae911truth.org/profile.php?uid=998894

[5] U.S. Navy 'Top Gun' Pilot Questions 9/11 by Alan Miller Sept. 5, 2007 http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_070905_u_s__navy__top_gun__.htm

[6] Photos of WTC victim, Edna Cintron, waving inside impact hole in World Trade Center North Tower http://patriotsquestion911.com/survivors.html#Cintron

[7] U.S. Department of Defense News Transcript Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with Parade Magazine Oct. 12, 2001
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=3845

[8] Speech by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in Baghdad Dec. 24, 2004 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6Xoxaf1Al0

[9] Letter to the editor of the Michigan Daily by Lt. Col. Shelton Lankford Feb. 5, 2007 http://www.michigandaily.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticleComments&ustory_id=ddcccb1d-e57d-416e-928a-da5591786272#542c84e6-9719-4cfc-880c-6ceca6fad92e

[10] Photos of WTC victim, Edna Cintron, waving inside impact hole in World Trade Center North Tower http://patriotsquestion911.com/survivors.html#Cintron

[11] Silverstein Answers WTC Building 7 Charges by Paul Joseph Watson Jan. 5, 2006 http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2006/050106silversteinanswers.htm

[12] Audio recording of interview of Lt. Col. Jeff Latas by Rob Balsamo June 25, 2007 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1858087487546809825&q=jeff+latas&total=14&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=5

[13] Video documentary Pandora's Black Box, Chapter 2, Flight of American 77 by Pilots for 9/11 Truth
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8672066571196607580&q=pandora%27s+black+box&total=42&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

[14] Petition to Reinvestigate 9/11 Signed by Over 100 Prominent Americans Oct. 26, 2004 http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20041026093059633

[15] The American Reichstag Fire - 911 and Non-investigation by Capt. Eric May 2005 http://mujca.com/captain.htm

[16] Interview of Commander Ted Muga on the Alex Jones Show April 11, 2007 http://prisonplanet.tv/members/audio/110407muga.mp3 (Subscription required)

[17] Impossible to Prove a Falsehood True: Aircraft Parts as a Clue to their Identity by Col. George Nelson, MBA http://www.physics911.net/georgenelson

[18] Testimony of Maj. John M. Newman, PhD, Congressional Briefing: The 9/11 Commission Report – One Year later July 22, 2005 http://www.vt911.org/McKinneyReport20050722transcript.pdf

[19] Radio interview of Col. Ronald D. Ray by Alex Jones, June 30, 2006 (Subscription required.) Summarized in July 1, 2006 article on propagandamatrix.com
http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/july2006/010706doesnthunt.htm

[20] Time Stamp Confirms BBC Reported WTC 7 Collapse 26 Minutes In Advance by Paul Joseph Watson Feb. 28, 2007 http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2007/280207timestamp.htm

[21] Silverstein Answers WTC Building 7 Charges by Paul Joseph Watson Jan. 5, 2006 http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2006/050106silversteinanswers.htm

[22] Video recording of statement by Maj. Scott Ritter July 22, 2006 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1232419751782017310&q=%22ray+mcgovern%22&hl=en

[23] Radiation Expert Claims High-Radiation Readings Near Pentagon After 9/11 Indicate Depleted Uranium Used by Greg Szymanski Aug. 18, 2005 http://www.arcticbeacon.com/articles/18-Aug-2005.html

[24] Testimony of Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer before the Armed Services Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, Feb. 15, 2006 http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/testimony/251.pdf

[25] Interview of Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer on Fox News Aug. 24, 2005 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1956542165192088795&hl=en

[26] Navy Captain Backs Able Danger Claims, Fox News Aug. 23, 2005 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166504,00.html

[27] Debunking The Debunkers by Joel Skousen Feb. 14, 2005
http://www.rense.com/general62/deun.htm

[28] Video documentary, One Nation Under Siege Gen. Albert Stubblebine’s statement can be viewed at http://www.undersiegemovie.com/media/stubblebine.wmv

[29] Military Intelligence Hall of Fame Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Intelligence_Hall_of_Fame

[30] Former Vietnam Combat and Commercial Pilot Firm Believer 9/11 Was Inside Government Job by Greg Szymanski July 17, 2005
http://www.arcticbeacon.com/17-Jul-2005.html

[31] Video documentary 9/11 Ripple Effect by William Lewis and Dave vonKleist August, 2007http://www.911rippleeffect.com/

[32] Pilot who flew 2 planes used on 9/11 doesn't believe official story by American Buddhist Net Sept. 13, 2007http://americanbuddhist.net/pilot-who-flew-2-planes-used-9-11-doesnt-believe-official-story

[33] Interview of Capt. Russ Wittenberg Sept. 16, 2004http://911underground.com/WING_TV_2004-09-16_Russ_Wittenberg_Interview.MP3

[34] Interview of Col. Ann Wright and Laurie Van Auken by Richard Greene on the Clout show on Air America Radio Network Sept. 11, 2007 http://www.yourbbsucks.com/forum/aacl091107.mp3

[35] Petition to Reinvestigate 9/11 Signed by Over 100 Prominent Americans Oct. 26, 2004 http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20041026093059633

[36] Seven CIA Veterans Challenge 9/11 Commission Report by Alan Miller Sept. 23, 2007 http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_070922_seven_cia_veterans_c.htm

[37] Eight U.S. State Department Veterans Challenge the Official Account of 9/11 by Alan Miller Jan. 5, 2008
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_080104_eight_u_s__state_dep.htm

Authors Website: http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/

Authors Bio: Alan Miller is author of the website http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/

Source:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_080112_twenty_five_u_s__mil.htm
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