This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
The Failure to Investigate 9/11 Has Bankrupted America
Preface: This post does not discuss whether or not 9/11 was a “false flag” operation or an “inside job”. Anything other than a discussion of the negligence of the Bush administration is unnecessary for the purposes of this essay, and is thus beyond the scope of this post.
In case you didn’t get the memo, we are currently in a depression. And see this
And given that American citizens can be indefinitely detained or assassinated at the whim of the president, it is pretty clear that we now live in a police state.
This post will demonstrate – without getting into discussions of an “inside job” one way or the other – that the failure to hold a real 9/11 investigation is a core cause of our loss of our prosperity and freedom.
THE FAILURE TO INVESTIGATE 9/11 HAS BANKRUPTED AMERICA
Top economists say that endless war bankrupts a nation.
For example, Nobel prize winning economist Joe Stiglitz says that the $3-5 trillion spent on the Iraq war alone has been very bad for the American economy. See this, this and this.
The endless wars have also been a main component of America’s soaring debt:
And huge debts exert a very real drag on the economy.
As shown below, we wouldn’t have launched the war against Iraq – or the endless panoply of wars throughout the Middle East and North America – if 9/11 had actually been in investigated.
(Even the 9/11 Commission itself admits that there was criminal obstruction of justice and a whitewash of the investigation. See this, this, this, this, and this. As such, there has never been a real investigation.)
THE POLICE STATE WAS CAUSED BY THE FAILURE TO INVESTIGATE 9/11
The police state started in 2001.
Specifically, on 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney initiated Continuity of Government Plans that ended America’s constitutional form of government (at least for some undetermined period of time.)
On that same day, a national state of emergency was declared … and that state of emergency has continuously been in effect up to today.
It is beyond dispute that 9/11 was entirely foreseeable, but – due to the extreme negligence and incompetence or lack of caring of the Bush administration (remember, I’m not getting into any other theories in this post) it wasn’t stopped. Even the chair of the 9/11 Commission said that the attack was preventable.
If there had been a real 9/11 investigation, the Bush administration’s extreme negligence would have come to light. And Americans would have learned that terrorism can largely be prevented if the military and intelligence officers are simply allowed to do their job.
As just one example, Dick Cheney was in charge of all counter-terrorism exercises, activities and responses on 9/11. See this Department of State announcement; this CNN article; and this essay.
The genius Mr. Cheney apparently scheduled 5 war games for the morning of 9/11. Specifically, on the very morning of September 11th, five war games and terror drills were being conducted by several U.S. defense agencies, purportedly including one “live fly” exercise using real planes. Then-Acting Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Richard B. Myers, admitted to 4 of the war games in congressional testimony — see transcript here or video here (6 minutes and 12 seconds into the video.
False radar blips to be inserted onto air traffic controllers’ screens as part of the war game exercises, which may have confused the heck out of them (see this December 9, 2001 Toronto Star article; pay-per-view; reprinted here). Way to let that one slip through, Mr. in-charge-of-all-war-games.
The military – under the Vice President’s command that day – didn’t scramble enough fighter jets, and then scrambled jets far over the Atlantic Ocean, in what Senator Mark Dayton called:
The most gross incompetence and dereliction of responsibility and negligence that I’ve ever, under those extreme circumstances, witnessed in the public sector.
And the knucklehead personally watched flight 77 for many miles, but – according to Secretary of Transportation Norm Minetta – stopped it from being shot down before it hit the Pentagon (and see this).
Americans would have learned through any real 9/11 investigation that Cheney’s negligence and mucking around in what should have been the generals’ jobs was partly responsible for allowing 9/11 to happen.
In other words, a real 9/11 investigation would have shown Americans that 9/11 should of, could of, and would have been stopped – and that America can protect itself against future terrorist attacks – simply by playing goalie well in our country.
And Americans – instead of being scared into immobility – would have been mad at our government for dropping the ball. And we would have demanded accountability and effective service from our elected officials. (Indeed, experts have repeatedly demonstrated that fear of terror makes people stupid … and makes them willing to accept a loss of liberty and other abuses they would never otherwise accept.)
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
Instead, of course, Americans were led to believe that Al Qaeda was going to get us unless we took the fight to the Middle East and North Africa. The administration pretended that Saddam Hussein had a hand in 9/11 – one of the main justifications for that war.
Had a real 9/11 investigation been conducted before we launched the Iraq war, it would have taken away one of the two main rationales for that war. (The FBI was also instructed to blame the anthrax attacks on Al Qaeda, and high-level government officials pointed towards Iraq as the source of the anthrax, even though there was absolutely no basis for those claims. But that’s another story.)
Dan Rather was right when he wrote last week:
We have been so afraid; so hell bent on destroying enemies … both foreign and domestic … we have hurt ourselves and our democracy.
Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser also told the Senate in 2007 that the war on terror is so overblown that it is “a mythical historical narrative”.
And as I noted in 2008:
Former deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats, a 23-year senior CIA analyst, who “drafted or was involved in many of the government’s most senior assessments of the threats facing our country [and who] devoted years to understanding and combating the jihadist threat”, writes today in the Washington Post that the neocons have whipped us into an irrational fear of the terrorism. In reality, “Osama bin Laden and his disciples are small men and secondary threats whose shadows are made large by our fears” and our leaders.
This is no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. The BBC produced a documentary called The Power of Nightmares in 2005 that showed that politicians were greatly exaggerating the terrorist threat for political ends.
And unfortunately, many in government have intentionally whipped up fear in the American public for their own political purposes. For example, FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, constitutional law expert professor Jonathan Turley, Time Magazine, Keith Olbermann and the Washington Post have all said that U.S. government officials “were trying to create an atmosphere of fear in which the American people would give them more power”.
And former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge admits that he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help Bush win reelection. Fear sells.
And because 9/11 was never really investigated, the government – instead of doing the things which could actually make us safer – are doing things which increase the risk of terrorism.
As such, the threats from terrorism form even more of a “justification” for a suspension of our Constitutional rights.
The failure to investigate 9/11 has bankrupted America financially and morally, and has allowed us to stand idly by while our liberty has been destroyed.
»
- advertisements -
i blame the consumers.......we didnt shop enough and send a real message to the terrorists
a few box cutters and a guy in a cave
pulled off the destruction of a wing of the
pentagon, 3 heavily and recently insured high rises,
killed 2500 plus people and then bankrupted the
most robust economy in the world. that is some
accomplishment, to get people to believe it is
another amazing accomplishment.
.
Thursday December 1 12:00pm
http://archive.wbai.org/
.
g.null interviews a cia whistle blower/asset
on advance warning and knowledge of the 9/11
events. everybody knew in advance. when she
spoke out they indicted her . .......
A Bilderberg planned and financed ops.?
i would say it was an operation that enabled
what came after and was approved and conceived
to accomplish the mess that was the first decade
of the 21st century. definitely a globalist
effort to gain influence, power, energy, steal
the savings of a generation, their property values,
build a securities and derivative bubble to mars,
destroy the world as it was to create room for these
technocrat operators from the insider clubs/new world
rulers and lords. virtual fiat lords. etc..
and war etc.. defense dept. missing/lost funds....
the system was in terminal ponzi collapse already by
year 2000.
it was a terrorist attack but the identities of the
terrorist were mis stated, an investigation would
be very radical and painful for the terrorists. i think
much of the evidence has been posted on the web already.
the real world makes sense, what is hard to comprehend
is the level of evil that many will embrace for what they
mistakenly believe is power. imo
.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2011/11/currency-wars-why-finan...
29 November 2011
"Currency Wars: The Anglo-American Century and Why the Financial Engineers Hate Gold and Silver
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
Antoine de Saint Exupéry
.....
...
This currency war is happening now, and it is something new in the history of warfare, because I do not believe that a fiat currency regime has ever existed before to this extent on a global scale, with a mutually destructive threat like nuclear power dampening the impulse to wide scale military conflict.
But as in all war, some things never change.
"When the rich wage war, it is the poor who die."
Jean-Paul Sartre
At some point the dawn will come, but first the darkest hour. Our business is not to surrender to discouragement, and cooperate with evil, but to carry on in our missions, whatever they may be, as God gives us light.
"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall — think of it, always."
Mohandas K. Gandhi
The ascendancy of evil in the world is a shameful episode in history; the triumph of dark powers in claiming our souls for all time, without end, is a tragedy." ...
..
A raw nerve was certainly hit with at least a couple responders here. Profanity controls?
Quite right on consequences of corrupt government and power-hungry politicians. Bush and Cheney were the worst as most conservatives and libertarians agreed. How many books have to be written about this dark age of Bush's cronies and Macchievellians?
Depression? Reminds me of our good friend Howard Beale:
Howard Beale: I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'
The terrorist won.
You fucking commie cocksucker!! You make me sick!! Steal the name of George Washington in a pathetic attempt to lend credence to your crap!! Fuck you!!! Blow me!! I hope you die, you commie asshole!!
/sarc?
Is that big upper lip from sucking cock,perchprism...???
Yup,thought so.
...if that was some sort-a critique, see link below...
U.S. Says Americans Are MILITARY Targets in the War on Terror … And that the Prez Alone Can Decide Who Is a Target ...ZH's George Washington
2 years and 7 weeks on ZH and this is your best post ever!
Best go over to www.TheBeastilityPlatform.com were SmokeyQuinn encourages like-minded people with such indepth and intellectual comments.
Go back to the drawing board.
You're trying to make the case failure to investigate caused bankruptcy? Your own chart says otherwise. Tax cuts comprise the largest slice of the pie, Then comes "other debt" and economic downturn, before finally getting to wars. I'm not sure if you are trying to make a subtle slap at Bush tax cuts, or make a case for a new investigation. I surely can find no correlation in your article between failure to investigate and bankruptcy.
And no mention of our Illustrious Leader during the decade of building hatred and head burying (pun intended) in the 90's. Could have been addressed after the first World Trade Center attack.
That first chart is a bunch of colors that don't really say anything useful in regard to the issue of whether 9-11 was properly investigated. First, the actual attack, following the dot-com buuble bursting by about a year, led us into recession. That was an inevitability regardless of the "true" circumstances around 9-11. The Bush tax cuts were in response to that recession. Second, the current "economic downturn" shown on this graph, along with Tarp and other bailout costs, were a result of the speculative housing bubble bursting. You can't claim that the bubble would never have occurred had 9-11 been properly investigated, or even if it had never happened! Had we NOT inflated a bubble after the dot com burst, those parts of the graph charting the costs of the economic downturn and recovery measures would have stretched back to 2002, but the recession then was buried under further private debt, making our current economic downturn all the more severe.
According to the chart, without the costs of and related to the current economic downturn, without TARP, Fannie and Freddie, and by rescinding the Bush tax cuts, the cost of the wars that followed 9-11 would not have brought the percentage of debt above what it was in 2000.
What's bankrupted America is three things. First, the "progressive" tax system. Government collects more money when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few than if evenly distributed, and those few get help from the government to fleece us so government can pay bills. It behoves the government that the folks in the highest tax bracket make as much money as possible, as often as possible, and by any means necessary. 12.25% of the total AGI of America goes to the government as income tax. The top 1% pays 38% of that and the bottom 50% pays about 2.5% of that. If everyone made the same amount of money (divide the total AGI by the number of actual taxpayers) the government would only get about 9.35% of total AGI, a shortfall of about a quarter Trillion dollars annualy.
It's just common sense. If the cops got a third of everything crooks stole from you, and used it for Corvette patrol cars, blow, and vacation homes in Aspen, they would have no incentive to EVER end crime in your city. So what does a bankrupt government have as an incentive to crack down on the financial industry when in lieu of taxing the poor and middle class the government gets a significant cut of the loot the banksters take from you in which to finance its very existence?
Second, every new dollar in revenue translates to $7 more in debt. Federal revenues are around $2.2 Trillion whereas national debt is $15 Trillion, or roughly 7 to 1. And investors and governments still finance us. Any tax money raised that is not enough to pay off, or significantly pay down, debt will eventually be leveraged into more spending. No matter how much we want certain people to pay more in taxes, whatever we collect in new revenue (unless specifically for a BALLANCED BUDGET) will only end up seven times that in new debt.
Third, any time the words "spending cut" are uttered it is always a lie, because it is always a reduction in anticipated indebtedness, NEVER actual money in hand. When Congress "saves" $1.2 Trillion it just creates a marker for future spending. The anticipated national debt by 2022 will decrease $1.2 Trillion (allegedly) from $24.2 Trillion to $23 Trillion, but not go down - certainly not down to $13.8 Trillion from $15 Trillion as they'd have us believe. So why go through the motions? Simple - to set us up for more new spending. About a year down the road some congresscritters will propose some big new spending bill, but of course we're broke. So where will the money come from? Well, everyone will remember the struggle to save $1 Trillion in spending (had the supercommittee "succeeded"). They'll just spend that money as if it was actual cash in hand. That's all spending cuts do - arm politicians with phony cash to spend at a later date after conning the electorate into thinking money had actually been saved and is sitting in a big pot.
excellent precis...does make you wonder what would happen to the economy if federal spending was capped at the tax take plus debt interest. 30% spending cuts anyone? makes sense to me, so I cant vote for either party and the system of junkie enablers that goes for the federal system these days.
When I travel now I see hatred in people's eyes when they find out I am American. And this is in Ireland and Italy where people used to love us.
I've heard of Americans that travel abroad now saying they are Canadian...
I found myself doing that starting in 2002. Amazing the difference in response I got and that was almost 10 years ago...
"The F-15 pilots flew ''like a scalded ape, topping 500 mph but were unable to catch up to the airliner," Major General Paul Weaver later told reporters." .../snark
The unclassified top speed of an F-15 is Mach 2.5 (approx 1905 mph)...500 mph is just above stall....
Airliners top 500 mph. If the F-15s were chasing them at the same speed it's not hard to believe that they couldn't catch them. Maybe they weren't suppose to catch them?
If we had spent the money on the F-22, this wouldn't have happened!
Aw, I thought that was funny TDS, most didn't catch your humor I guess.
Cheney.."so...what will we have GW doing during all this...hmm..got it ...he can read My Pet Goat to some school kids....ok were on..."
keep up the good work GW, you know the MSM will never let the facts get in the way of a good story that gets them a nice fat salary for reading someone elses lies on the teleprompter. i posted the below on the "us turning into a third world country part 2", but it could equally have been posted here:
One thing that has always perplexed me is what role the FBI is supposed to play in all this fraud and intimidation by corporates, banks and lobbyists. After all in its February 2010 budget, they have this:
Budget Summary: The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 budget request proposes a total of $8,264,677,000 in direct budget authority, including 33,810 permanent positions (13,057 Special Agents, 3,165 Intelligence Analysts (IAs), and 17,588 Professional Staff) and 32,908 full time equivalents (FTE). The request includes a total of $8,083,475,000 for Salaries and Expenses and $181,202,000 for Construction, and is critical to the FBI’s investment strategy to acquire capabilities needed to counter known or anticipated national security threats and crime problems.
Now call me naive if you want, but thats 66,000 odd people getting paid around $120,000 on average, each! Surely, but surely, they must have been doing something, or are we in a SNAFU regulatory and policing environment that is akin to the security screw-ups that resulted in the creation of homeland security?
Homeland security has a meagre (net) $57 billion ($96 billion gross, whatever that means) and more than 200,000 employees in the presidents last request for 2012 here
http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/budget-bib-fy2012.pdf
interesting how that works out at a net cost of $285,000 per employee per annum.
Are all these guys also part of the rip-off transfer from main street (aka tax payers) to wall street (aka Banks) to wall street police force (aka Homeland Security) or what?
They're just divvying up the loot.
There was no need to investigate 9/11. The government wanted to invade and occupy Iraq, 9/11 provided the political cover they needed, end of story.
also, add to that, ushering in of the police state aka "Patriot Act"
I agree with your assertion "that the failure to hold a real 9/11 investigation is a core cause of our loss of our prosperity and freedom."
Have you considered that this was the purpose and intention of the act?
Follow the money.
Have you considered that this was the purpose and intention of the act?
Follow the money
*****************
You're right-following the money seems to always lead to the same outcomes-
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nSTO-vZpSgc/SRVN4sw-LCI/AAAAAAAADtE/6EYg40HZUf...
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nSTO-vZpSgc/SRVLM8Kif0I/AAAAAAAADs8/Ad1Iwf_fPJ...
Both parties agree that the cuts increase speding (at least at the low end). Does your chart somehow account for the increased spending, which results in more income somewhere along the line, which results in more overall taxes collected?
Does your chart somehow account for the increased spending, which results in more income somewhere along the line, which results in more overall taxes collected?
The multi-national corporations that are part of the military-industrial complex dramatically increase profits during wartime, but that doesn't necessarily result in them paying more taxes. Take a look at General Electric's financial statement last year and you'll see they paid no income tax on $13+ billion in profits. That is the one of GW's main points to a very well-written post.
I'll take that as a NO then. Do the increased profits allow them to hire more employees (or fire less during the downturn)? Does it allow them to give raises? If so, don't those employees pay taxes? I think these "second order" effects need be accounted for in order to make a legitimate argument.
Do the increased profits allow them to hire more employees (or fire less during the downturn)? Does it allow them to give raises? If so, don't those employees pay taxes?
Again, I would point to General Electric as an example and note they are hiring employees in China as they continue to cut jobs in the U.S. Not sure if those new hirees in China are getting raises or paying taxes.
Having a huge MIC is like basing your economy on fireworks and fireworks festivals. Except that after the show everyone's bleeding and psychologically damaged instead of happy.
GW again blames Bush/Cheney because all good progressives do and then goes on to piece together a narrative so he can feel better about his boy being a complete and utter failure. Hey, GW your boys government Socialism sucks as well especially if you want to talk about spending. Obama has spent 5 Trillion in three yrs. If this president doesn't like the nations spending then he should advocate changing it. Did I miss something?
I know, don't you hate it when people over react to murderers. I feel the same way about Penn State and priests
And in your heart of hearts what do you think Mccain and the Palin woukld have done? your thoughts?
Are you fucking willfully retarded? GW JUST wrote a huge piece about how evil Obama was and has written DOZENS AND DOZENS. You fucking Republitards just can't fucking step out of the Repub vs Dem paradigm for even a fucking second can you? GW isn't socialist nor is he statist you fucking morons. TRY READING WHAT HE WRITES. He takes BOTH parties to task, big government to task and the whole fucking international criminal cabal that has taken over the Western World to task. Jesus fucking christ I'm sick of you nitwit Repub tunnel vision idiots posting the same old tripe I was reading in 1996 shut the fuck up and wake up and smell the BI-PARTISAN Fascism!!!!!
The left is vastly more captive to left/right paradigm than the right. The left will just completely abandon their principles to defend their own. Their people can do Libya without a peep from the 'anti-war left', and their leaders can grope and rape women, and set up institutions that grope and mentally rape women, and the feminists utter nary a peep. Their politics is captive to their 'mommy knows best' philosophy - when mommy is one of their own, all hell can come down and they revel in it, thinking the right is somehow being especially attacked.
Same as the right wing supporting the police state that groping grandma's and allowing the military to indefinitely detain americans. Both sides gleefully sign on for mayhem and murder if they think they are winning the culture war. No doubt the left is a bunch of hypocritical bitches...just like their mirrors on the "right".
It's a disease the afflicts both sides, no doubt. But the philosophical foundation of each side insures that it infects the left worse, since they hold to nothing - no constitutional or moral absolutes aside from their opinion of what those should be.
You mean kinda like Newt Gingrich & Herman Cain?
Liberal communists:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n07/slavoj-zizek/nobody-has-to-be-vile
Well, if you are happy with the results of the 9/11 investigation, then yes, you missed a lot.
Why don't you just go back to sleep?
9/11 was a collaborative effort between the American, Jewish, British, European, and Saudi elite. It was planned a long time ago and rolled out on schedule.
george, you turned dyslexic on me.....you can't intelligently discuss 9/11 without discussing the conspiracy component...but i still gave you a 5 for the article :-o
the chaircunt of the 9/11 commission told jesse ventura on his conspiracy theory show that the purpose of the 9/11 investigation was not to determine the truth but to uphold the institutions whatever the fuck that means besides lying through her skank ass...
and no airplane hit the pentagon. there isn't the slightest shred of evidence, especially forensic, for such an irresponsible claim. on the other hand, we can be certain that a missle hit the pentagon.
dick cheney's command of the military exercises that day was to provide cover for the usa initiated attacks....and yes, he should have been removed from office for gross incompetence although that really wasn't his crime.
but speaking of trillions of dollars, rumsfeld was questioned about 1-2 trillion usd missing from the pentagon on 9/10 and deus ex machina the next day comes the attack. of course it would have come any way but how convenient that it diverted attention away from the missing funds issues....
so yes we have a police state as designed by the rockefellers who were the ultimate masterminds or approvers of the 9/11 attacks as seen in aaron russo's interview on the subject of nick rockefeller.
and this police state is the most paranoid godforsaken imbicility i have ever seen....it makes dr strangelove look like a well adjusted casper milquetoast....what fucktard would take off his shoes to get on an airplane? or allow someone to pilfter his baggage or stick a probe up his ass to make sure he wasn't loaded with tnt????
i agree that much damage control could have been achieved through the incompetence angle but no one is ever held responsible on incompetence charges....
the patriot act should be rolled back and declared unconstitutional...obama should be outed for his fraud in submitting a faked birth certificate...he is NOT natural born usa citizen and is still an indonesian citizen - he is an outlaw....so with a fucking liar in the white house we have no chance of uncovering incompetence....
and when jack kennedy's murder by the very same cabal who produced 9/11 is whitewashed and covered up you can be certain that no one will give a fuck about competency...
until people start understanding conspiricies, i can assure you that the nazi police state will wax strong and invincible. that, george, is why you are wrong on this one but i love you anyway and thank you for your platinum contributions to zh.
<<no one is ever held responsible on incompetence charges.>>
Officers in the military are normally held responsible for their incompetence or negligence. The ones supervising America's defense on 9/11 got promotions instead.
the most important lessons out of 911 are the true nature of peak oil and the true nature of your political leaders.
Very few make that connection, even if they get that the official story about 9/11 is bullshit, most don't see it in a bigger context of panic mode around Peak Oil.