just so.

neither bush, who had little experience governing, nor cheney, who did not lack for experience, but was completely lacking in analytical temperament, were the leaders to get us thru this crisis.

i would also add that the overreaction clark talks about was, in my view, a way to cover their prior incompetence. these excesses were intended to draw attention away from their lack of personal preparedness and their lack of wisdom before the crisis.

as we learned, it would have taken no more than a focused effort by the fbi bureaucracy to stop the entire attack. the perpetrators were so obvious in their training that they drew the attention of two sets of fbi field agents in different parts of teh country.

finally, i have allowed myself to think more than once that bush and cheney may have welcomed a terrorist attack as a means to justify attacking iraq. they just may niot have foreseen the scope of impact of a spectacularly successful attack on the world trade center. bush, after all, was fond of saying at republican fund-raising rallies with respect to the budget, that hius admin’s experiencing the 9/11 attack and the invasion of iraq was like winning the trifecta.

These aren’t conspiracy theories. These are live testimony.

Bush actually admitted to seeing the first plane hit the first tower, live, in real time. Listen as he catches himself and tries to explain it. He admitted it not once, but twice – each time on video tape in front of crowds of people. He says “I was sitting outside and saw the plane hit the tower.” The only explanation for his statements is that he was receiving a live secure stream to his limo out front of the elementary school prior to going inside.

Live streaming secure video was also how he and Cheney observed the torture of detainees – in real time.

One may not like the alternate 9/11 theories, but Cheney’s be very afraid version of what happened on 9/11 is the justification for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Patriot Act, Guantanimo and torture,and the suspension of our civil liberties. They are the cornerstone for our foreign and domestic policy built upon Cheney’s version of events.

The professional FBI interrogators who initially questioned captured al Qaeda suspects just weren’t getting the “right answers” that Bush officials wanted to hear, especially with regards to Iraq. The detainees weren’t admitting to any connection between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda, which contradicted what Iraqi exiles were telling BushCo and what Curveball was feeding German authorities…so with the Bush administration having a war to start, and the sooner the better, Bush officials decided to use torture to get the answers they wanted in a more “timely” fashion.

Indications are that once BushCo had all its pre-war preparations in place by late 2002, then Bush would order the assault to begin during the 2002-2003 winter months, taking advantage of the colder “better-fighting” temperatures then, no doubt recommended by generals at the Pentagon.

Per the rhetoric of Bush officials leading up to the war’s start, any invasion of Iraq would be over fairly quickly, with the war’s costs being paid for with captured Iraqi oil, over a year and a half before Bush started campaigning in mid-2004 for reelection to a second term. Thus, the “Mission Accomplished” publicity stunt, which no doubt would have been widely used in Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign…if things had gone according to plan.

The long-sought Republican invasion of Iraq was delayed. U.N. WMD inspectors weren’t finding any of the WMD stockpiles in pre-war Iraq that tortured detainees and Iraqi exiles had said were there. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld grew impatient, so on the first day of spring 2003 (having missed the Iraqi winter and facing the brutally hot Iraqi summer ahead), they ordered the U.N. inspectors out of Iraq and hostilities to commence.

The torture ordered by BushCo before the war to elicit information to sell their insane war shifted after March 2003 to using torture within Iraq against detainees, at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, to justify after-the-fact their insane war…with BushCo constantly keeping in mind Bush’s reelection chances in 2004.

U.S. WMD inspection teams sent into post-invasion Iraq, even with Iraqi detainees being tortured for “right answers,” never could find any hidden Iraqi WMD, just as mountains of Sunni Baathist documents seized by our occupying forces never revealed any shred of evidence indicating that Saddam Hussein’s regime had anything to do with al Qaeda and 9/11.

So, the cover-up began in earnest, through 2003 and 2004 (leading to Bush getting reelected), and continuing to this day (now meant to keep Bush officials from going to prison or The Hague). We all know by now that top Bush officials authorized torture of prisoners, contravening international treaties and federal statutes outlawing torture. We all know they’ve tried to cover-up their torture regime, even going so far as to establish shadow interrogation sites run by shadow interrogators, some of whom were private contract torturers-for-hire. And we all know, finally, that much of the torture used against prisoners was not meant to protect the U.S. from another right-wing terrorist attack, but was meant to elicit information to justify their mad push for war against Iraq, both pre-invasion and post-invasion, which is why the more professional, career FBI interrogators were sidelined.

I stated that we have not seen any images from satellites of any planes in flight on 9/11, specifically, none approaching or striking the Pentagon. This is a fact. Your comment, that this was technology impossible, is total fiction. False. Not true. A lie.

What was your purpose – injecting fiction into a discussion of truth? You held yourself out to be an expert at #46. You earlier implied some expertise with respect to the engineering of steel structures as well. Now who’s got the credibility problem?

Agents of disinformation abound.