Posts filed under ‘Terror’
9/11: Remember Building 7?
I post this because dammit, I want answers.
I didn’t see a fire. Did you?
(Via.)
Remembering 9/11/01
My heart goes out to all of those who lost their lives on 9/11/01. I also feel deep sorrow for the death of thousands of innocent Iraqis — Iraq having had nothing to do with 9/11 — and the 4,400+ American soldiers who gave their lives “defending our freedom” there.
It is a tragedy that the likes of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld — people who are being revered today — lead us into that war, a war that should have never happened; that should have ended years ago; a war that is still sucking the life blood out of our country economically
In retrospect, on this 10th anniversary, there is much more than 9/11 itself to mourn.
The Pentagon Wasn’t Hit By an Airplane
I never believed the Pentagon was hit by a jet.
No way.
This is FOX for God’s sake. They go “frame by frame,” desperately trying to convince us it happened but There. Is. No. Jet. Period.
An Homage to the Workers at Ground Zero
Here is an extremely moving (and beautifully done) video produced by AFSCME about the dangers and stresses faced by everyday workers at Ground Zero on and immediately after 9/11.
Something Might Blow Up This Weekend…
Something might blown up this weekend.
That’s all we know?
Specific, unconfirmed terror threat received against New York or Washington
“Specific” unconfirmed terror threat received against New York OR Washington?
Ah, excuse me but that doesn’t sound “specific” AT ALL.
Ron Paul: 9/11 Happened “Because There Was Too Much Government”
Ron Paul tonight on MSNBC: “9/11 came about because there was too much government.”
9/11 came about because there was too much government? Ron, you’re kidding, right?
——————–
President’s Daily Brief prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency and given to the U.S. President George W. Bush on August 6, 2001. The brief warned of terrorism threats from Osama bin Laden and al-Quaeda 36 days before the September 11, 2001.
9/11 happened in part because the government we had was on vacation in Crawford, Texas.
Dana Perino Thinks She’s an Expert on Truthiness?
A few minutes ago I received this tweet from OWillis:
You will recall that Dana Perino was George W. Bush’s press secretary.
I could guess, but I wasn’t positive who Perino was talking about, so I asked:
(Carney, as in Obama’s press secretary.)
This is Willis’ reply:
The reason I care is because Dana Perino knows a thing or two about saying untrue things. She’s in the stratosphere on that front:
This would be Perino on November 24, 2009:
“We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term.”
(Video via.)
So, the next time you see Dana Perino sitting on her high horse, passing judgment on Fox “News,” remember this video.
Gadhafi ♥ Condi
Love this, our Tweet of the Day (yeah I know, it’s from yesterday):
If you don’t get it, go here.
“See Something, Say Something”
Here’s a new “anti-terror” television ad the Feds are rolling out ahead of the tenth anniversary of 9/11.
It doesn’t tell us anything new:
Financial Terrorism
Here’s a long but important read if you’re so inclined:
Financial Terrorism In America: How The Economic Elite Made Off With $46 Trillion.
Here are two charts from the piece that I can’t stop thinking about.
Look at the explosion — the freaking explosion! — in food stamp participation in the last five years:
And hell yeah man, private prisons are a big business and they shift even more moolah upward because prisoners are now being used as slave labor for large corporations. Gee. How convenient.
Utoya Shooter: A Handsome, Blond, White Wingnut
The 32-year-old Norwegian man who allegedly went on a shooting spree on the island of Utoya has been identified as Anders Behring Breivik, according to multiple reports.
Norwegian TV2 reports that Breivik belongs to “ring-wing circles” in Oslo. Swedish news site Expressen adds that he has been known to write to right-wing forums in Norway, is a self-described nationalist and has also written a number of posts critical of Islam.
Police say at least 80 people are dead in the Utoya shooting (not to mention the bombing in Oslo which they think Breivik was responsible for as well).
Look. He’s a blond white guy. Like this blond white guy.
Timothy McVeigh
You don’t have to look like a this
to be a terrorist.
And you don’t even have to be a Muslim. Breivik is a Christian as was McVeigh.
Slow-News-Day Fear Mongering
Gosh, golly, gee. It seems the 24/7-what-are-we-gonna-do-to-fill-all-that-time cable “news” shows covered a “terror alert” this evening (absent a “high-speed” LA car chase), as in a “suspicious package” at the White House:
Thank God I missed it.
Think: Manufactured fear because the cables are lazy ass, cheap “news” organizations and turning a “suspicious package” into an hour’s worth of “news” is easy.
Fox: No Terror Attacks on American Soil During the Bush Administration
Talk about the mother of all attempts to re-write history, check out what Fox’s Eric Bohling said yesterday:
Fox News host Eric Bolling pulled a Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday, asserting that there were no terrorist attacks on “American soil” during President Bush’s term in office.
Giuliani famously made a similar assertion in early 2010, saying, “we had no domestic attacks under Bush.” Of course, the 9/11 attacks happened under Bush.
[...]
Panelist Bob Beckel said that the former president had used fear-mongering around the non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. As he attempted to continue his point, Bolling cut him off and started to move on to the next segment.
America was certainly safe between 2000 and 2008,” he said. “I don’t remember any attacks on American soil during that period of time.” Nobody on the panel challenged this comment.
The outrageous thing about this is not only what Bolling said, but that NOBODY ON THE PANEL CHALLENGED IT!
Fox bills panelist Bob Beckel as one of their “liberals.” Yeah, right. He’s such a flaming liberal that he sat there and said nothing instead of freakin’ jumping up out of his chair with flames coming out of his ears. Yep, Beckel is exactly the kind of pansy, suck-ass, wimp-shit “liberal” they love on Fox.
Imagine Being Tortured Every Day for Nine Years
Today marks the 31st anniversary of the massacre at Syria’s infamous Tadmor Prison. In 1980, hundreds of political prisoners were killed there after a failed assassination attempt on then-president Hafez al-Assad. Following the massacre, the prison was used as a tool of fear to quell opposition to the regime. And many of its prisoners were university students.
Tadmor is closed now, but the prison’s dark legacy lives on in the memories of those who survived the brutal torture there.
One of these survivors is Chicagoan Bara Sarraj. In 1984, Bara was a college student in Damascus when he was arrested and taken to Tadmor, where he was tortured almost daily for the next nine years. Now a transplant immunologist at Northwestern University’s School of Medicine, Bara recently sat down and wrote about his time in the prison. He’s posted his memoir online in Arabic, and has graciously shared his story with us.
Listen to Dr. Sarraj’s story here.
Which Dictator Killed the Most People?
Check out this graph showing which dictator killed the most people:
I know this screenshot is ridiculously small. Go to the original version here.
Wow. I had no idea Mao was such a monster.
Inside the FAA and Those “Control Tower Incidents”
On April 19, amid the rash of what I now think of as a suspicious raft of reports about air traffic controllers sleeping on the job and the potential dangers thereof, I posted about how a plane carrying Michelle Obama was involved in a “potentially deadly” air traffic control incident. In that post, I expressed some deep frustration:
Geez. I can’t help but thinking there must be a back-story to this. Is the FAA trimming its budget by not replacing controllers who retire or otherwise leave, thus causing the controllers who remain to work such long hours they’re falling asleep and messing up like this? The fact that there have been so many incidents in such a sort people of time, I mean, it can’t be a coincidence.
Not being an airline or an FAA insider, I could only write about my suspicions but today reader “J” (I’ll leave it up to her to “expose” herself via the comments section below) made a comment on that post. Her insider knowledge of the workings of the FAA nailed what I was trying to say:
I’m currently a student in a program that readies me to apply to the FAA to be a controller. I have to say, these stories are NEVER as bad as they sound. There have been incidents where aircraft were actually never in danger and were thousands of feet apart, but somehow the media says they were mere inches away and ready to collide. Take it all with a grain of salt.
And, as to the controllers falling asleep, imagine working swing shifts every single day… one day you work evenings, then you have to be in at 6 AM, then until midnight the next day, then overnight, etc, etc… and then imagine after all of that, you have a shift until 5AM, when there’s barely any traffic and you’re in the tower alone. You aren’t allowed to have a radio, a TV, a book, nothing to stimulate you to keep you awake and yet there’s barely any traffic to control and communicate with. How do you keep yourself awake for that?
Oh, and great idea from Ray LaHood to make it a rule that controllers aren’t even allowed to nap on their breaks. How does that even make sense?
Bravo and yep, that’s what I thought. The controllers are overworked and shit on but natch, the Fox Newses of the world and the broader “liberal media” blame it on them, not on their supervisors.
(H/t and many thanks to J.)
America’s FISA Court Rubber Stamps Surveillance Requests
Prosecutors can be biased, sloppy, egomaniacal and overzealous so when I read that their requests to the FISA court to electronically surveil American citizens were approved 100% of the time last year — 1,506 times to be exact – I couldn’t help but be skeptical about the court’s objectivity.
We’re supposed to believe that not one — not one — of those 1,506 FBI requests was vague and/or suspicious enough to be rejected? Guess so:
Newly released government data shows that FBI surveillance is on the rise. In 2010, the FBI more than doubled the number of U.S. persons it targeted with National Security Letters. Meanwhile, the number of electronic and physical searches under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act increased by 13 percent. The secretive FISA court was asked to approve 1,506 requests last year for secret electronic surveillance—the court approved every one.
Sorry Wingers, Bush Wasn’t Instrumental in the Death of bin Laden
Adam Sewer over at ThePlumLine eviscerates the Republican argument that torture and Bush’s “policies” were at the heart of the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden (emphasis added):
What is notable however, is that the major distinction between Obama and Bush that has formed the basis of GOP criticism of Obama — the President’s rejection of torture — has proven so decisively wrongheaded. Conservatives attempting to attribute successfully killing bin Laden to torture are merely attempting to take credit for what President Bush pointedly failed to do. Far from yielding the necessary intelligence, the two al Qaeda suspects who were waterboarded pointedly resisted identifying the courier whose activities lead to the U.S. discovering Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts. The pro-torture argument ignores the obvious — that if torture was so effective, bin Laden would have been dead long ago. Bin Laden was found through years of painstaking intelligence gathering, not through the barbarous methods supported by many Bush apologists.
One cannot discount how shattering the Obama administration’s killing of Bin Laden has been to the self-image of conservatives who have convinced themselves of that the fight against al Qaeda hinges not just on torture, but on how many times the president says the word “terrorism,” or on Obama’s refusal to engage in juvenile expressions of American toughness.
While we’re far from the moment where terrorism ceases to be a threat, what torture apologists fear most now is a future in which al Qaeda is destroyed without the U.S. embracing the war-on-terror “dark side” that’s become central to their identity. Indeed, having rejected torture, Obama has nevertheless lead the country to its greatest victory in the fight against al Qaeda.
The part I highlighted is the elephant in the room. If torture was/is so effective, why wasn’t bin Laden killed or captured years ago? Too bad the “liberal media” isn’t asking that of the parade of former Bush people who’ve been on teevee for the last week selling their line of bull.
Rightie Spin on the Death of Osama bin Laden
Rightie spin on the death of Osama bin Laden in 140 characters or less:
Makes total sense huh?
Dumb is cool.
Geezus.
Photos of Three Men Killed Along Side Osama bin Laden
Reuters has obtained and published photos of three men killed in the compound with Osama bin Laden on Sunday. Here they are.
I don’t think it’ll be long before someone gets hold of the photo(s) of a dead Osama bin Laden and publishes them too.
Brent Bozell: Bush “Deserved” To Kill bin Laden
My God. The sense of victimization felt by righties knows no bounds:
Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center is complaining that former President George W. Bush should have more credit than Obama for killing Osama bin Laden because Bush wanted it more. In a column for MRC, Bozell lambasts Obama because he described his administration’s fruitful efforts to locate and kill bin Laden and for being “rude” by not hailing Bush. In a show of incredible partisanship, Bozell says that the news of bin Laden’s death would’ve been better if it occurred during Bush’s presidency rather than as a result of the Obama administration’s successful operation: “My one regret is that Bush 43 didn’t get this scalp,” Bozell writes, “he deserved it more than anyone.”
More on Brent Bozell here. He’s a real piece of work.
Somebody Waterboarded Donald Rumsfeld
Looks like Donald Rumsfeld got a dressing down by GOP spinmeisters for telling the truth:
AP
Rumsfeld on Monday:
“The United States Department of Defense did not do waterboarding for interrogation purposes to anyone. It is true that some information that came from normal interrogation approaches at Guantanamo did lead to information that was beneficial in this instance. But it was not harsh treatment and it was not waterboarding.”
Rumsfeld today:
I’m told there was some confusion today on some programs…suggesting that I indicated that no one who was waterboarded at Guantanamo provided any information on this. That’s just not true. What I said was no one was waterboarded at Guantanamo by the U.S. military…Three people were waterboarded by the CIA…and then later brought to Guantanamo. In fact, as you point out, the information that came from those individuals was critically important.“
What’s going on here is that Republicans are trying to lay a historical foundation — albeit inaccurate — so the Bush administration’s illegal use of torture harsh interrogation is thought of as something that lead directly to the capture and death of Osama bin Laden, thus justifying it.
Why Did George W. Bush Close the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit?
It will take time (natch — frustrating as it is) for the details to emerge but this is a big part of the puzzle of what’s gone on in the last seven or eight years:
bin Laden Used One of His Wives as a Human Shield
UPDATED
Wow. If this is true it shows Osama bin Laden to be a total coward. I mean, what kind of low life pond scum uses one of his wives as his personal “human shield?”
U.S. officials believe that the woman killed during Sunday’s raid in Pakistan was one of Osama Bin Laden’s wives and probably died while being used as a human shield by the al-Qaida leader as U.S. forces closed in.
“She served as a shield, this is my understanding,” John Brennan, a top counterterrorism adviser to President Obama told reporters at a briefing Monday afternoon. “When there was an opportunity to get to Bin Laden, she was positioned in a way that she was used as a shield. My understanding was she was one of Bin Laden’s wives.”
On a related note, it sounds like the White House will release a photo of bin Laden’s corpse. (Seems to me they have to, though wingers the world over will undoubtedly claim it’s a photoshopped fake.)
UPDATED @8:13 p.m. ET: Per NBC’s Chuck Todd, the White House is “now walking back” the notion that one of the women killed was one of bin Laden’s wives.
I suspect there’s gonna be a lot of “walking back” in the coming days.
Bush: I Don’t Give a Rat’s Ass About Osama bin Laden Anymore
Remember this? Six months after 9/11 George W. Bush blew off Osama bin Laden: “I don’t know where he is. You know, I just don’t spend that much time on it, really, to be honest with you.”
(Via.)
Newspapers Celebrate the Death of bin Laden
Osama bin Laden is dead. Dead almost a decade to the day after George W. Bush said he wanted to bring him “to justice,” “dead or alive.”
Here are some newspaper headlines from around the country:
Osama bin Laden: Dead
Despite my speculation (below) that President Obama’s big announcement last night might have been about “the markets,” it was about Osama bin Laden.
He is dead. This is his “most wanted” poster from the FBI’s website:
Obama did what George Bush couldn’t do.
Mission accomplished.
Now there are hundreds of questions as to what we do next with regard to aid to Pakistan to fight the “war on terror,” do we completely withdraw from Afghanistan, etc., etc.
Millions for “Homeland Security” and Then, There’s This
Are we throwing millions of our “homeland security” tax dollars down a rat hole? I think so.
We pay for body scanners at airports and big bad toys for the FBI and the CIA but we haven’t gotten our act together when it comes to this?
247 people on terror watch list buy guns in 2010
More than 200 people suspected of ties to terrorism bought guns in the U.S. last year legally, FBI figures show.
The 247 people who were allowed to buy weapons did so after going through required background checks as required by federal law.
It is not illegal for people listed on the government’s terror watch list to buy weapons. For years, that has bothered Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., who is trying again to change the law to keep weapons out of the hands of terrorists.
Gosh. I wonder if the NRA has its hand in this (ah, yeah).
