Professor Steven Jones says it was thermite that brought down towers 1 and 2. I still think explosives were necessary (the towers were self-pulverizing and spewing all over) but that certainly helped.

look, over there!!!! explosions!

Because there are little old ladies taking their first flight ever, as well as infants and toddlers on the infamous no-fly lists? Because those lists are complied seemingly at random? Because whoever is putting those lists together is hedging their bets?

The no-fly lists have been well-documented as causing headaches for lots of people who are not, have never been, nor are likely to ever be terrorists. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the names of the “living terrorists” were found on them, _particularly_ if they had fairly common names, or names that were close to the names of other, -known- terrorists. Or if they were known aliases of known terrorists.

Never forget Government is Made of People.

Government is Soylent Green??? Who knew?

More seriously, though, what the heck does your “passport of steel” comment refer to?

Francis Fuck Your Mama.

It’s because I’m a worthless liberal pervert who is going to hell no doubt.

See ya there.

PNAC wanted a pearl harbor event. You can find it if you use the handy dandy search thingy in your PDF reader on the Rebuilding America’s Offenses document (btw whoever produced the PDF put the author as Hectoring Hegemons – if the low level employees within the Beast get it why can’t the rest of the population?)

Bush spiked bin Laden investigations.

They were doing a terror drill EXACTLY like 9/11 on 9/11 and several times before.

FEMA was in the WTC 9/10 evening. First they said that the guy mistakenly said so to the TV press. Then Giuliani says, well actually we were also getting ready for a bio terror drill on 9/12.

NORAD intercepted 67 off course flights that year, but let 4 planes go because of drills.

Mayor Willie Brown got warned.
Rushdie got warned.
Odigo sent out warnings to their customers.

Building 7, not hit by a plane, collapsed. Larry “I bought the entire WTC complex a few months before 9/11 but that’s a coincidence” Silverstein said they pulled the building. Then he said, after 2 years of nagging him, he meant the fire fighters. Problem: NO FIREFIGHTERS IN WTC 7. Even the swiss cheese hit piece by Ben Chertoff in Popular Mechanics says so.

Massive put options on United and American Airlines.

Bush’s “must not tolerate conspiracy theories” speech at the UN.

7 hijackers found alive in the middle east.

My favorite, these supposedly living hijackers are now on the NO FLY list. Why the flip would
they be on the NO FLY list IF THEY WERE ON THE PLANES? They’d be dead.

19 Hijackers not on the flight manifests. Go look it up.

Passport of steel.

I know these people are clowns. But they’re not incompetent. They’re out to create obstacles to progress and advancement, to make the world a nauseating place to live in. As long as
the world is starving and depressed they have no competition.

– Never forget Government is Made of People. YOU GOTTA TELL ‘EM.

I think we can, yeah. Are they devious enough to do something like that? Of course. But they aren’t competent enough to pull it off and lack the balls to try.

They were not behind 9/11. And I say this as a guy who doesn’t reflexively discount conspiracy theories.

Speaking of conspiracy theories, though, the conspiracy that Fukuyama spilled the beans on, that was the subject of this post, used to be denied by wingnuts who’d accuse us of being paranoid conspiracy theorists who probably also believe in Area 51 shit and the whole x-files nine yards, when we’d bring it up. “Oh, we act in good faith” “Oh, nobody could be that evil; what do you think we are, cartoon characters?”

Of course, as Fukuyama now admits, they were and are that demented, they have and do act in that sort of bad faith.

With this bunch, it’s right to assume the worst. But your calculus must include provisions for their abilities, which are negligible as we have seen. They can fuck-up a wet dream. To pull off an inside job with 9/11 is far beyond them in this regard.
So, with sympathy — NO.

Criminey. Stuff like this makes the Left look insane, and should be avoided like the plague.

After all, isn’t the Bush administration already guilty of enough misdeeds that are actually plausible for you to hate them? Would you hate them somehow more if you knew that Karl Rove had personally shot Santa Claus in the face, and therefore Christmas was cancelled this year?

Sheesh.

A little bit too much of a godsend if you ask some people:

http://pestilence.short-b.us/LooseChange2ndEditio.avi

Now, there’s some wacky shit in this little documentary, but considering what we already know about the current administration, can we really exclude from consideration the idea that they were behind the whole thing?

Look at who benefitted from 9/11 (Bushco), look who’s gotten more than filthy rich since then (Bushco), and look who’s got the most to hide (once again, Bushco). They had the motive, and they definitely had the power. I sure as shit wouldn’t put it past these slimy fucks to do some shit like this.

I remember tearing that thing apart in class – mostly that it’s just based on endless assertionns and anecdote with no real substance to it, but it sure fired the imaginations of a lot of Steve McQueen wannabes.

I’ve happily read some Zizek but am by no means an expert. I’ve never come across this point especially made this plainly. In which book or essay is does it come from?

Cette démocratie si parfaite fabrique elle même son inconcevable ennemi, le terrorisme. Elle veut en effet, être jugée sur ses ennemis plutôt que sur ses résultats. L’histoire du terrorisme est écrite par l’État; elle est donc éducative. Les populations spectatrices ne peuvent certes pas tout savoir du terrorisme, mais elles peuvent toujours en savoir assez pour être persuadées que, par rapport à ce terrorisme, tout le reste devra leur sembler plutôt acceptable, en tout cas plus rationnel et plus démocratique.

Guy Debord, Commentaires sur La Soci̩t̩ du spectacle, IX Р1988

Oh, I see what you’re doing, now.

No, it is not the Kristolmethodist purpose to give red meat to the proles. The Weakly Standard’s circulation is small, as indeed Commentary’s was small even in its heyday. But then the neocon elite is not in the business of direct-to-the-Lesser-Wingnuts meme dispersal. Rather, neocons are read by Higher Repugs, those in government or near it, to use as they see fit. It is understood by the neocons that through the Higher Repug medium, their message will be larded with prole-friendly mannerisms. Incidentally, this dynamic is the quintessence of Straussianism, Bloom Division.

– And this is precisely, again, why Fukuyama’s admission is so important. It proves the Straussian point: as you have provided the evidence for, Kristol and crew need not directly stoke the fires, *yet Fukuyama says that was their goal*. Neocons come up with the plans, lay the groundwork. Then the Higher Repugs put it into action and make it palatable to the masses of red state idiots.

In fact, they made precisely the same criticism of Clinton-era policy that you do: “we got rich from the carrot and forgot the stick”.

If you’ll read MY post linked to in the above article on the neocon bias of nationalism, I’ve addressed this already.

But to elaborate, Fukuyama’s relevation is with regard to neocon aspirations of a “threat’s” affect on the US voter. Now my thesis is that neocons’ main purpose is to expand and strengthen American hegemony. But how to rile the populace up enough to further these ends? Certainly, the middle east is rife with anti-american and anti-israel sentiments. yet there was muslim fatigue post-Gulf War I. Clearly it wasn’t getting the job done. But that didn;t mean that the neocons didnt want to do something about the middle east, hence PNAC. But anti-muslimism didnt turn the screws quite like anti-communism did a generation before. What to do? Ahhh, China — but that didn’t mean that neocons weren’t looking to the middle east as well.

Then 9/11, then the excuse to ratchet up the tribalism, the excuse to create a monolithic enemy. Finally, something to exploit like the old fear of commies. And now, well, here we are.

Perhaps you have some special insight here, but the public evidence is that they were trying to push for the US to reorient our foreign policy for the likely future challenges….and that, far from coming on Iraq and Islamism after 9/11, they’d devoted a great deal of attention to it for years. They’ve long argued that it was central to our future foreign policy.

Many on the left have argued for years that “the neocons planned this all along” (PNAC, etc). This new tack — that they’re just being opportunistic — is a shallow understanding of what occurred.

That is a job for military planners and war-gamers, and it comes from a defense orientation. The neocons “searched” for such threats out of an offensive orientation, to use as a cudgel in domestic politics (which is Fukuyama’s point and no, he does not misunderstand), and to strategerize a way to develop American hegemony abroad.

Taking long-view appraisals of possible threats for the purposes of defense is necessary and admirable. Cynically creating or exaggerating longterm threats for nefarious purposes, on the other hand, is abominable.

This is true now but not so much then in the 90s.

Sigh sigh sigh. Back then, in my stupider days, I was a neoliberal type like DeLong, Yglesias, Drum et al. My argument against the China As Evil Empire schtick then was along the lines of: “no, they want mcdonald’s and kfc and vcr tapes and we must use such things as a carrot and stick.” Which was indeed better than a new Cold War. But instead we got rich from the carrot and forgot the stick. This is liberals’ fault. Most favored nation status was supposed to be renewed contingent to China improving its human rights record. It was not. Also, in hindsight it was massively stupid to recommend that a country of 2 billion people take up the habits of American consumption: it means environmental holocaust. Now, matters are much much worse though we cant see it as such now.

China is not a monolithic enemy and shouldnt be used as such in order to make a new Cold War. But neither should it be excused. It’s the worst of the capitalist and communist worlds combined; in many ways it is the libertarian dreamcountry where property is sacred but people are cheap and disposable. But I dont have any answers, only analysis.

*That’s* what that feeling is. I see teh l4m3 has beaten me to stealing it. Bummer.