I hope on the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, there were two men who wanted to make the disaster worse. Osama bin Laden and this guy:
Newly published audio this week reveals that Vice President Dick Cheney’s infamous Sept. 11, 2001 order to shoot down rogue civilian aircraft was ignored by military officials, who instead ordered pilots to only identify suspect aircraft.
That revelation is one of many in newly released audio recordings compiled by investigators for the 9/11 Commission, published this week by The Rutgers Law Review. Featuring voices from employees at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and American Airlines, the newly released multimedia provides a glimpse at the chaos that emerged as the attack progressed.
Most striking of all is the revelation that an order by Vice President Dick Cheney was ignored by the military, which saw his order to shoot down aircraft as outside the chain of command. Instead of acknowledging the order to shoot down civilian aircraft and carrying it out, NORAD ordered fighters to confirm aircraft tail numbers first and report back for further instructions.
Cheney’s order was given at “about 10:15” a.m., according to the former VP’s memoirs, but the 9/11 Commission Report shows United flight 93 going down at 10:06 a.m. Had the military followed Cheney’s order, civilian aircraft scrambling to get out of the sky could have been shot down, exponentially amplifying the day’s tragedy.
It still amazes me this guy is taken seriously on anything.
Cat Lady
It takes balls to order civilian aircraft shot down.
/wingnut
geg6
Truly an evil and totally incompetent (as far as governing is concerned) piece of shit, Cheney is. I wouldn’t listen to him either. They were correct about his not being in the chain of command. The way he goes around bragging about how awesome he was that day because he gave an “order” that was universally ignored and how the media eats that shit up tells you everything you need to know about how fucked this country truly is.
Joel
My gob is smacked.
TheMightyTrowel
What. A. Wanker.
ETA: this thread needs a ‘because of WOW’ tag.
Bulworth
Hadn’t realized the military basically told cheney to go eff himself. cool.
wilfred
Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, and this cretin, this epitome of war pig, lives, breathes and eats. Now comes the 9/11 porn.
Nah! Move on, I say.
JCT
Ah yes, our deep thinker former VP — just shoot all the planes out of the sky and we’ll sort it out later.
Just imagine the carnage.
But I’ll bet he would still have “no regrets”.
Yevgraf
Wow. Just…freaking…wow.
What a “leader”. What a “man”.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
jibeaux
Good grief. I don’t know anything about the military, aircraft, or how to behave in a disaster, but even I could have figured out that, oh, I don’t know, making sure any suspicious planes were ON A TRAJECTORY TO HIT A BUILDING OR POPULATED AREA before shooting them down might have been a more prudent way to go.
Comrade Mary
This is the start of the narrative that Cheney is weak, right? Right?
PeakVT
Most striking of all is the revelation that an order by Vice President Dick Cheney was ignored by the military, which saw his order to shoot down aircraft as outside the chain of command.
Well, it was, wasn’t it? The Veep has no enumerated powers outside the Senate.
Yevgraf
@JCT:
It’s the best part of being a Christian – Jesus will sort out the consequences of the pain caused by all your fuckups, incompetence, greed and evil in the afterlife. You never have to be measured or responsible, and this is why, in my mind, Christianity has become nothing more than a filthy fucking death cult.
Emma
What amazes me is how many people still think of him as “tough.” The whole incident speaks to me of a man so out of control panicked that he was ordering the United States armed forces to act against civilians.
Dennis SGMM
There is, of course, no possible way that Cheney was intent on making a bad thing worse.
The Dangerman
For a most excellent read on this part of the story, I recommend this book.
Hill Dweller
That administration was full of cowards who were, by avoidable circumstances, put in a position(one they had run from their entire lives to that point) where decisions resulting in life and death had to be made, and they failed miserably.
Our worst enemies couldn’t have picked a more perfect lot to achieve their aims.
Emma
@Yevgraf: Excuse me, but no. A certain deformed version of Christianity very prevalent in the United States is a death cult. There are enough Christians left that actually read the New Testament to make the distinction.
Bulworth
fxd
EconWatcher
I watched Sean Hannity interview Cheney over the weekend on Fox (yeah, I like to sprinkle rat poison instead of ketchup on my fries, too).
Anyway, Cheney acknowledged that he probably “lost influence” in the second half of the W administration, to which Hannity clucked sympathetically. Both of them spoke of this like some kind of change in the weather, as if there wasn’t an obvious cause–as if it wasn’t the complete disaster of the first administration that finally got even W to realize that he had to go elsewhere for direction and advice.
Does Cheney really believe his own BS? Whatever else one might say, he’s not stupid. Baffling.
jwb
@Comrade Mary: It’s more or less in line with Perry’s comment about executions last night, so I imagine the Gooper base is thinking that it’s too bad that Cheney’s orders weren’t followed. I mean if those pilots weren’t guilty, they wouldn’t have been in the sky, now, would they?
Linda Featheringill
@Emma:
Yes. The New Testament teaches compassion and empathy.
Culture of Truth
I wish they would stop calling the “Vice President’s order”, “Dick Cheney’s order..” the VP has no such authority and it wasn’t an order — it was a request, or bleating, or whinging, or raving, whatever, but it wasn’t an order.
Nemesis
Shoot down civilian planes, blame the terrorists, cover up the truth and its business as usual for Crime Boss cheney.
gnomedad
Am I hearing another round of applause from the Reagan Library?
Culture of Truth
@jwb: Kill Baby Kill
Kola Noscopy
The debris field of Flight 93 was more than five miles in length, indicating a mid-air disintegration, which in turn indicates a shoot down.
The tiny little dent in the ground at Shanksville, where the plane supposedly completely buried itself in the ground and then covered itself up, is a joke.
Anyone who believes the government story is a willing dupe. The power of fear to prevent people from even asking questions is amazing, but there it is nonetheless…
JCT
@gnomedad: No, just a round of AWWWWWWW, when they realize that it wasn’t carried out.
Explosions! Innocent people dying! What’s not to like?
/deep disgust off
trollhattan
@EconWatcher:
How long before li’l Lizard Cheney either runs for office or is given some administrative position, heck, a cabinet position? If somehow superduper killa’ Rick Perry gets elected, I’ll predict we’ll see this very thing.
Maybe put her in charge of energy policy and make her Secretary of Kickin’ Ass.
Zifnab
@Nemesis:
It’s shit like this that make the Truther’s paranoia legitimate. Easy to say “Our government would never do that” when you don’t have them on tape basically saying “Kill all the civilians, we don’t give a fuck”.
Iraq was just this mentality writ large against brown skinned foreigners. “We gotta kill them over there so they can’t kill us over here”. Who? Them. Why? Cause maybe they might kill us or something. :-p
What a god damn fail parade.
kd bart
I wish I could be around in 200 years to read the history on those 8 incompetent years. Just to know what those in the future thought of the Bush years.
trollhattan
@Kola Noscopy:
Uh, okay.
Folks, I have an announcement: Stay away from the brown acid.
artem1s
so if the passengers/heroes of Flight 93 had been successful in retaking the plane they would have then been in jeopardy of being taken out by our military. THAT should be the counter punch to his ridiculous claim that he was being tough and protecting the US from terrorism.
windshouter
I’m not a military guy, but what does the Vice President think his role was here? I’m assuming he’s a conduit for the President and he’s just the guy on the phone to the military.
Isn’t this like the air traffic controller on the aircraft carrier who actually talks to the pilots pretending to be running the battle?
soonergrunt
OT–5CA dismissed Virginia AG Ken Kuccinelli’s challenge to the Affordable Care Act for lack of standing, reversing the lower court.
Oh, and Dick Cheney is an asshole.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
We know of at least one person here who “took this guy seriously”. Owns a fat cat and two dogs.
Unlike the rest of the permanent 27% batshit, insane people in this country, that person came around. Must have fallen off his horse going to Damascus, or Pittburgh and had a secular, humanist come-to-Jeebus moment.
Kola Noscopy
@trollhattan:
Ahhh…the first to attempt the standard shaming/mocking/belittling ploy.
Questions must not be asked! The obvious must not be stated!
The government would never lie to you! :D
Good lord, what a joke.
trollhattan
@Kola Noscopy:
Well stated.
Dennis SGMM
@Kola Noscopy:
Please, knock it off. I was in Naval Air for several years. The first aircraft I saw go down was flying at low speed less than 500 feet off the ground. The debris field was a few hundred yards long and the biggest piece of that aircraft that we recovered (And we walked down the crash site for days afterward picking up pieces) was no larger than a folding chair. This was a two seat jet fighter that had been very robustly built because it made carrier landings. We determined, after laying out all of the pieces on the hangar deck, that the aircraft had suffered an engine failure and that the pilot hadn’t enough time to either eject or restart the engine.
Kane
In providing a forum for Cheney, the media has allowed him to reargue the decision to invade Iraq, regurgitate his nonsensical defense of torture, claim credit for the death of Osama Bin Laden, reject any responsibility for the current economic turmoil, casually push aside the countless warnings of the 9/11 attacks while in the same breath delusionally claim that he kept the country safe.
Some in the media continue to treat Cheney as if he is a respected dignitary deserving of VIP treatment. They inquire not only about the contents of his book and select activities during the previous administration, they also seek his thoughts and opinions on a range of current issues as if he is a wise old sage with something invaluable to offer, as if he has an ounce of credibility to publicly speak about anything.
soonergrunt
@Kola Noscopy: I’m not sure you could be dumber if you tried, but you and m_c/hgw/sm/whateverthehellshescallingherselftoday should get together. That’s about your level of cognition. Of course, this might be the new persona, in which case just carry on then.
Earl Butz
@wilfred: I am not sure you can apply the term “lives” to a creature that has no heatbeat. Dick Cheney, our first real zombie.
Preach on. Our nation rolls in pathetic yet aggrandizing self-pity the way my dog rolls in anything dead, rotton, and odorous. The more foul, the better.
Sam Houston
“Newly published audio” I want that sound file!
slippy
@trollhattan: That would be under President Not Sure, one would assume.
After that she could change our nation’s motto to “Haulin’ Ass and Gettin’ Paid” and have that printed on our dollar bills as well.
Oh, I can see it now. In fact, I can go to my DVD collection and watch that kind of idiotic lunacy for 90 minutes.
Yevgraf
@Emma:
That horse done left the barn a long time ago. The views of the Pharisees won out, and they are ascendant among the remnants from the purges of the devout.
The primary form of Christianity that remains in the South and Midwest is adherent to a dogma created from years of operant conditioning – a massive Skinner box of multiply repeated tautologies, all designed to create a dominion which is to be a ruthlessly managed Skinner box.
Think about the message:
-Christians are persecuted if they can’t use tax dollars to proselytize;
-Christians are persecuted if they can’t cram their idiocy into your kids’ brains against your wishes;
-Christians are persecuted if retail clerks don’t wish them a Merry Christmas;
-Christians are persecuted if people don’t appreciate noisy and arrogant public prayer;
-Christians are persecuted if you don’t accept their maudlin description of an inflated Christian role in America’s founding.
Yutsano
Kill them all. God will know his own. Hey it was good enough for the Albigensian heresy. Why not modern applications?
Kola Noscopy
@Dennis SGMM:
Please, knock it off.
This huge plane disappeared into the ground and/or broke up into tiny, teensy pieces, including its humongous engines.
Questions must not be asked! Shut up!
jacy
I still remember a story from NPR interviewing a CDC microbiologist. Short version: Dick Cheney made a plan for mandatory anthrax vaccination (men, women, and children). While the logistics were being figured out (making enough vaccine, how to implement the plan) various scientists consulted on the project lobbied Bush incessantly, explaining that this would be a huge disaster and literally kill thousands upon thousands of people to protect against a threat that was basically nil. But Cheney pushed it and pushed it and Bush went along. The program moved along and got closer and closer to implementation.
The microbiologist then spoke of getting an early morning phone call and a request that he (and a few others from the team) come to the White House. He said his heart sank, because this was apparently the final go ahead to begin final implementation of the vaccination program.
When he got there, he said they sat down with Bush and Bush, to everyone’s surprise, said something along the lines of, “I just can’t do this.” Over the vehement protestations of Dick Cheney, the plan was scrapped, saving thousands of lives.
Listening to that NPR report, that the was only time I ever felt the slightest glimmer of admiration for Bush. And it’s also just one of the many, many reasons that I truly and sincerely wish Dick Cheney a miserable, prolonged, painful death after which I will merrily dance on his grave.
Kola Noscopy
@soonergrunt:
Questions must not be asked! Shut up!
jonas
@Kola Noscopy: I usually try not to feed the trolls here, but this is particularly egregious. A plane blown up midair comes down in huge, visible chunks (cf. pictures of debris near Lockerbie after PanAm 103) because of the catastrophic decompression and/or damage from the missile. A plane nosediving thousands of feet out of the sky completely disintegrates, leaving behind little more than a smoking hole in the ground.
Better conspiracy theories, please.
trollhattan
@slippy:
I’ll bite: “Bring on the Brawndo!” :-)
trollhattan
@jacy:
IIUC not granting Scooter a full pardon was quite the kick in Cheney’s junk.
Kola Noscopy
@jonas:
“A plane nosediving thousands of feet out of the sky completely disintegrates, leaving behind little more than a smoking hole in the ground.”
hahahahahaha….
cmorenc
The irony is that during the earliest days of the Bush Administration and stretching back to the 2000 Presidential campaign, Dick Cheney was widely considered as a prudent, experienced, sane hand by influential people in both parties, including many who had known him for many years in Congress and then as head of the Defense Department. It’s hard to recall now how most people (even Democrats who had known Cheney for many years) were counting on him to be the prudently sane influence on George W. Bush to constrain the latter from running the train of international/defense policy off the tracks.
It’s difficult now to sense just how wicked a surprise the Dick Cheney that emerged during the first four years of the Bush Administration was to many old Washington hands in both parties, at least until the true dimensions of the Iraq deception and misadventure began to dawn on more and more people. They had believed Cheney would play wise Yoda to Bush, but instead he turned into Darth Vader. That Cheney has the evil personality of Darth Vader seems so blindingly obvious now that it seems utterly astonishing in retrospect that so few people saw it coming back in 2000.
Dennis SGMM
@Kola Noscopy:
What’s a few years’ experience working on actual aircraft and having to – rarely thank goodness – pick up the pieces of them and sometimes those of their crew, compared to a good conspiracy theory, eh?
I am now with soonergrunt@40 on this one.
Kola Noscopy
Yes, the entirety of Flight 93 fit into this hole.
uh…yeah.
Emma
@Yevgraf: I did say that in the United States there was a deformed form of Christianity. It does hog the limelight. But as long as there are Christians who still believe the actual message of Christ, there are competing strains of Christianity. The South and Midwest of the United States is not the world.
trollhattan
@Kola Noscopy:
Still here?
Roger Moore
@Yutsano:
Unfortunately, nobody thought to apply that logic to the Bush Administration. I doubt God would have been willing to acknowledge many of them as his own. Something about not feeding the hungry, watering the thirsty, welcoming strangers, clothing the unclothed, and visiting the sick and imprisoned.
Earl Butz
@Kola Noscopy: Just like this one did. Huh.
Or this one. Which only took out one city block.
I could go on. Call me when you get a clue, or even better when you have a parent that works for NTSB as an air crash investigator, like I do.
gover
Krugman was right about Cheney and some others. There are monsters.
Kola Noscopy
@trollhattan:
Sure.
Pssstttt…why do you ask?
Suffern ACE
And he would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for those lousy teenagers. Well seriously, he would have gotten away with it. We would have gotten the right planes and biographies of the passengers would reveal that a few once wrote angry things on blogs, a few went to Pakistan. And of course there would have been at least a dozen planes with the number three al Qaeda leader sitting in business class.
Suffern ACE
@cmorenc:
It’s amazing what a few years as the all powerful head of a Fortune 500 company will do to a guy’s ego.
Kola Noscopy
@Earl Butz:
small fragments of debris were found as far as eight miles from the tiny little hole in the ground in Shanksville.
I’m not saying nothing hit the ground there, but it sure wasn’t the whole plane. I believe the military probably shot it down and wants to keep that fact secret owing to the “noble passengers” legend.
Oh, and I work for the CIA.
Woodrowfan
I was wondering when the twoofers would come and start repeating their long-debunked BS. For those interested in details this site is a good resource.
http://www.911myths.com/index.php/Main_Page
trollhattan
@Kola Noscopy:
I was wondering how long you’d take to go from haughty “Unserious people are not taking me seriously on this obviously serious matter” to “I know you are, but what am I?”
Not long.
Mike in NC
Remember that Cheney came up with the paranoid “One Percent Doctrine” which held that even if there were 1% chance of something catastrophic happening, it had to be treated as an absolute certainty. Thus hundreds of billions of dollars wasted here and abroad.
Truly a figure of Orwellian mendacity.
Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .
No, you don’t.
Kola Noscopy
@trollhattan:
what the hell are you talking about?
Kola Noscopy
@Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .:
No, really, I do. Just like Earl Butz works for the NTSB.
ppcli
@Kola Noscopy:
Custodial services?
soonergrunt
@Kola Noscopy:
No you don’t. I’ve never seen you at any of the company parties or mixers.
I can neither confirm nor deny my own employment at the CIA, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you don’t work here.
And the Kennedy assassination was NOT an inside job, so there!
Elizabelle
John, your first sentence is missing some words.
Let’s watch to see which news outlets question Cheney about this (actually, if he deigns to take any questions).
Maybe we won’t see his skeletor face for a while, while he waits for this to die down and be old news.
This audiotape is perfectly timed for when people are listening and while the war criminal is schlepping around promoting his memoirs.
FlipYrWhig
@Mike in NC:
Except for climate change.
geg6
@Kola Noscopy:
Oooooo, a Truther. Because only you are smart enough to figure it all out.
Fuck you, asshole. There were plenty of eye witnesses to what happened in Shanksville, not to mention how far they had to dig to even get to the black boxes of a plane that slammed into the ground at over 500 mph. People like you are too stupid to live.
kd bart
He said he had a parent work for the NTSB.
Kola Noscopy
@ppcli:
I’m in charge of everyone’s monthly company-required and provided colonoscopy.
I find it rewarding.
Kola Noscopy
@geg6:
Why so angry and defensive? (shut up! no questions allowed!).
Could you provide a link or links to the information about the black box being dug out of the ground? Also, could you provide a link to the information that was subsequently revealed by the release of the data on the black box?
Thank you
Roger Moore
@Mike in NC:
Too bad they didn’t apply the same logic to climate change. There, a 1% chance that climate change isn’t happening (as judged by oil company executives) is proof that the issue isn’t settled and we should do nothing. These are both examples of a more general idea of Republican thought: any evidence for my point of view is proof that I can do what I want.
Cat Lady
I’m more or less in the LIHOP camp. The WTC 7 collapse has always bothered me.
Kola Noscopy
@Cat Lady:
As it would bother anyone not in denial. Good for you.
(But you should whisper such things here at BJ)
geg6
@Kola Noscopy:
I’m not angry and defensive. I think people like you are made to point and laugh at.
Anyway, pretty much anything you want to know about eye witnesses, recovery efforts, and the people who conducted them are on this page:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11247/1172163-455.stm
I don’t need to listen to the flight recordings to prove to me you are an idiot. I have actually worked as a volunteer at a plane crash site (USAir Flight 427) and can tell you that what you find so “suspicious” is what happens at plane crashes when a plane slams into the ground.
greenergood
Why the hell are these ‘newly released’ files? Why weren’t they used as exhibits before the 9/11 ‘Truth’ Commission in 2004? Have they been in a shoebox in Cheney’s dark cave for the past ten years? it’s drip, drip like this that feeds all sorts of interpretations, conspiracies, whatever you want to call them, that neutralizes any potential ‘authoritative’ report of what happens, till we’re left with smoke and mirrors. The people who lost their lives on 9/11, the families and friends of those who lost their live on 9/11, and the ONE MILLION or so Iraqis, Afghanis, ‘extraordinarily rendered’ people from all over the globe, etc. who were either killed or maimed because of 9/11 deserve to have all the shoeboxes of audiotapes under Cheney’s bed revealed to the world.
Cat Lady
@Kola Noscopy:
Don’t get too excited about finding an ally. I’m just naturally skeptical about the official version of anything, but I don’t think the Shanksville plane was shot down as you seem to think.
Gin & Tonic
@Kola Noscopy:
If you did, you’d never say so. Even under a nym on a blog.
PurpleGirl
@cmorenc: Even after he recommended himself as the VP?
I think that should be a tell that he wasn’t thinking of the country’s interests.
geg6
@greenergood:
I believe they mean “newly released” to the public. I do believe that all of this was available to and was used by the 9/11 Commission. There’s lots they got to see and hear that we have not. Yet. SOP for most events like this. Hell, there’s Kennedy and Vietnam stuff that hasn’t yet seen the light of day.
fuzed
panicky like a little …..:
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kola Noscopy: Psuedo skeptics aren’t skeptics, thank you for playing Kola.
Now Mr Truther, why aren’t you paying attention to the basic point of the article; if the military was shooting anything suspicious down on 9/11 it would have been a slaughter. Do you think fighter pilots are magical mind readers that can tell “Muslim terrorist Pilot” by just looking at an aircraft?
PattyP
Kola:
And on May 11, 1996, this plane plummeted from the sky and disappeared into this hole in the ground. It’s not as big as a B-757, but it’s still a fair amount larger than, say, a single-engine Cessna.
cckids
@cmorenc:
To me, it shows how batshit, pants-wetting scared out of his mind 9/11 made him. So terrified of death that ANY means, any cost was justified to lower the risk of dying. I don’t even think he gives a shit about the deaths of others on 9/11. I think he is absolutely babbling with fear at the thought of death for himself.
Personally, I’d love to be a fly on the wall the day he looks up, & sees the figure who says “FOLLOW ME”, and the whining & crying that will erupt from the Dick. No punishment in any future world/life/existence would repay Cheney for his transgressions in this one.
Elizabelle
Looks like we had a successful hijacking of this thread by Kola Noscopy.
cckids
Oh, and also? Cheney isn’t Darth Vader, he more closely resembles Emperor Palpatine. After all, Vader was redeemed & came back to the good side in the end. Just sayin’.
SW geek out
Svensker
@cmorenc:
That would have been me. I figured Dubya was a failure idjit, but Dick would be there to be the adult in the room. Dear Lord, forgive me.
I have to say, I thank our stars in some ways for Dubya, who apparently stopped Dead Eye Darth from wreaking even more havoc, including attacking Iran. Had not heard that about the vaccinations or the shooting down civ aircraft. Crikey, the man’s a vampire.
Kola Noscopy
@Cat Lady:
THAT is what is lacking in general…skepticism toward the official account.
There is plenty of evidence the government is covering up all kinds of 9/11 shit without there having to have been any controlled demolition shenanigans, for example.
Kola Noscopy
@greenergood:
This.
EconWatcher
This is the third thread I’ve seen today with relentless feeding of a troll. Come on, folks, a 9/11 truther? Let’s at least have some standards for the trolls we feed.
Kola Noscopy
@Gin & Tonic:
Not too bright, are you?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
How is it these pundits don’t understand how craven he is? Can’t they tell he’s a coward? It oozes out of him.
Monkey Business
I’m just wondering if anyone realizes that Dick Cheney attempted to issue an order to the military from outside the chain of command?
Essentially, Dick Cheney attempted a one-man-coup d’etat the morning of September 11th. Now, I’m a bit rusty, but I’m pretty sure that attempting a coup d’etat is treason, right? And not regular treason; it’s high treason.
Now, again I’m a little rusty, but isn’t the penalty for high treason is death?
At some point we as a country have to deal with this most shameful period in American history, during which the Vice President apparently committed treason and somehow got away with it.
Kola Noscopy
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I’m looking at physical evidence and calling bullshit. YOU are the one taking things a few steps further and trying to read minds, idiot.
Kola Noscopy
@PattyP:
Your “this hole” link doesn’t work.
Please show me your hole.
Kola Noscopy
@Elizabelle:
Oh fuck off, hall monitor. Write about any stupid shit you want to.
Davis X. Machina
@Monkey Business: Sedition, perhaps, but not treason.
Treason is the only crime defined in the Constitution itself, and not left to the US code. The founders had the minatory example of how treason charges were used in 16th and 17th century Englad.
Kola Noscopy
@EconWatcher:
“This is the third thread I’ve seen today with relentless feeding of a troll. Come on, folks, a 9/11 truther? Let’s at least have some standards for the trolls we feed.”
Shorter EconWatcher: shut up! shut the fuck up! don’t ask questions!
Svensker
@Monkey Business:
A bit hyperbolic for me, even as much as I loathe Cheney. Alexander Haig did the same “I’m in charge” thing when Reagan was shot. Well, maybe we should have shot Haig, too. Hmmmm.
MomSense
My husband was on an airplane that morning at exactly that time. Very grateful that W. was reading “My Pet Goat” and Cheney was ignored.
If only our pathetic media would stop giving these fools credibility they clearly do not deserve.
geg6
@Kola Noscopy:
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Seriously? Physical evidence is a photo that does not even offer proper perspective? A photo that says nothing about actual physics or that is being compared to other similar plane crashes? A photo that completely discounts any and all eye witness accounts or the accounts of the non-federal people who worked the site? A photo that completely discounts the in-flight recordings and the real-time conversations had with passengers who were on the plane and had no one from the federal government telling them to pretend that there were hijackers they were going to grapple with so that the feds could blow them up instead? For reals?
You and your ilk are, as I said above, too stupid to live.
Nerull
You keep “asking questions”, but you close your eyes and throw a tantrum if anyone shows an answer.
The crash only looks suspicious to one idiot who has never seen another plane crash in his life. Good for him. Why do we care?
Yutsano
Oh jeez. One of our resident trolls is ban evading again. Still enjoying your non-vote Timmeh?
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Kola Noscopy: I don’t get it. Are you saying that planes that were shot down produce less debris than planes that crash? I don’t think that guns can disintegrate things, so where would the missing stuff go?
Tom
I loathe Cheney as much as the next guy, but I actually don’t have a huge issue with the “shoot down” order, aside from the fact that it should have come from the president, not the, cough, “vice” president.
Anyway, on that morning they were faced with a scenario in which you KNOW a plane is in control of hijackers who want to crash it into a densely populated area. You’re faced with a Sophie’s choice:
Don’t do anything and watch it crash into a building, killing people in the building and the plane.
OR
Shoot the plane down, saving the people in the building and killing those on board.
This scenario didn’t happen. And I don’t know what I’d order if I were in the position to make the call, but I’m not going to jump all over the guy for making the call to authorize jets to shoot down aircraft in that situation.
No matter what you think of Cheney, that’s an incredibly tough decision to make in a very little amount of time.
geg6
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
And apparently, a plane traveling over 500 mph when it slams into the ground should be completely intact. Not to mention every single part or piece of it should stay within about 10 feet of impact or something. Jet fuel isn’t flammable or explosive, after all. And the trees surrounding the field shouldn’t have any debris or body parts, or something.
Also. Too.
Kola Noscopy
@geg6:
Newly released transcripts of 9/11 audio are missing something:
The account published this week is missing two essential pieces that remain restricted or classified, according to Mr. Kara. One is about 30 minutes of the cockpit recording of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into the ground after passengers tried to storm the cockpit as hijackers flew across Pennsylvania toward Washington, D.C.
Hmmm…wonder why that might be?
Dennis SGMM
@Tom:
I can’t buy that. The order to ground all aircraft meant that many, many flights would have deviated from their pre-arranged flight plans as air controllers scrambled to re-direct them to the nearest airport. On 9/11 there were 30,000 flights scheduled and 5,000 aircraft with several hundred thousand passengers aboard either approaching or over the US. A shoot-down order for any flight that wasn’t going where it was originally supposed to would have resulted in mass murder had NORAD not kept a cool head.
geg6
@Kola Noscopy:
Dude, feel free to think stupid shit.
I have better things to do.
When you’ve spent some time at a major plane crash, then maybe I’ll take you seriously.
Kola Noscopy
@Nerull:
Well, that is only if you don’t count the millions and millions and millions of OTHER people who like to use their brains…in 2008 a Zogby poll of U.S. citizens showed that 42% do NOT believe the official story of 9/11.
Grumpy Code Monkey
The kinetic energy of a 757 slamming into the ground at 850 km/hr is roughly equivalent to the energy released by one metric ton of TNT (KE = 1/2 mv^2, you can Google m and v for a 757). That’s the reason you don’t find large pieces after a crash like that, and why debris can be scattered pretty far and wide. Imagine what would happen to an airplane sitting on the ground if you detonated a tonne of TNT inside it.
Kola Noscopy
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
Either it was shot down and the debris is scattered over a huge area more than ten miles long, or no plane went down there at all. I don’t KNOW the answer, I have questions and skepticism based on the flimsy evidence. I would like the government to tell us, which is their job, based on credible investigation, not the 9/11 Commission joke.
Roger Moore
@Monkey Business:
Cheney may not have been in the chain of command, but he was right next it. He can justify trying to seize command by claiming the President wasn’t there, he didn’t know the President was OK, so he thought he was in charge. It’s a lame excuse, but it’s enough to create reasonable doubt in a jury. He’d never be convicted.
greenergood
@geg6: that’s my point geg6 – why must we wait for our supposed ELECTED betters to reveal evidence that should be in the public domain? I thought that was what the Freedom of Information act was all about – I know I sound naive, but if we’re still waiting for stuff from Vietnam, then we really are screwed – people like Cheney (and their offspring) will be chuckling to their graves. And their grandchildren will be military-industrial complex billionaires.
Nerull
@Kola Noscopy: And a slightly higher percent believe that Jebus is going to come down, destroy the world, and take them up to heaven in the next few years. They don’t know jack shit about aircraft accidents either.
Dennis SGMM
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
His mind is made up, don’t confuse him with facts. I tried it based on direct experience with aircraft crashes.
Did anyone else notice that the debris field used as “proof” doubled in size between comment #27 and comment #118?
geg6
@Kola Noscopy:
Again, I challenge you to provide some sort of proof based on other plane crash sites and physics to show why it can only be your two scenarios: shot down or never happened. I’m not a physicist (but I’ll bet we have some here), so I can only say, based on having been at a crash site, that it sounds almost identical to what I saw here in Hopewell Township in 1994.
Kola Noscopy
@geg6:
I thought you had better things to do. :D
geg6
@Kola Noscopy:
I have better things to do than drum up stupid conspiracy theories. If you have proof of your theory that is better than your fevered imaginings, please provide it. I’ll make time to evaluate it.
Roger Moore
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
And, FWIW, air-to-air missiles have relatively small warheads that don’t hit the target plane directly anyway. They have annular blast fragmentation warheads that weigh at most a few tens of kilos, most of which is fragments designed to fly out from the warhead and cut up the target airplane. They certainly don’t have enough explosive to blast a large passenger jet into tiny little pieces.
cleek
@Kola Noscopy:
any reason you didn’t quote the vey next sentence of that article?
sounds like the families know what’s on there. if it was a huge evil plot, don’t you think some would’ve said something by now?
Kola Noscopy
@cleek:
Well, gosh, I don’t know…why doesn’t the government release the recording and then we’ll know and you can point and laugh at me?
I’ve never bought the idea that the release of evidence pertaining to the most epic attack ever on U.S. soil should be controlled by the alleged fee fees of family members. 9/11, whatever it was, happened to this entire country and the public deserves to know the truth.
Besides which, if 93 went down in great heroic flames of glory, as the official myth would have it, why wouldn’t the families of the heroes want confirmation of their loved ones’ valor confirmed?
Doesn’t smell right…unless you’re a willing dupe.
General Stuck
Guess we’ve had about every kind of silly break out around here, might as well have the twoofers weigh in.
cleek
@Kola Noscopy:
you used an awful lot of words to not answer two simple questions.
geg6
@cleek:
Dude, forget it. He’s got his
fantasynarrative and no amount of truth, science, or eye witnesses are gonna deter him from it.He probably thinks Ron Paul is the shiznit, too.
Ruckus
@Culture of Truth:
I’ll bet it was an order. I’ll bet he gave it as an order. The fact that everyone with actual authority knew it wasn’t an order was the controlling issue. I’ll even bet that to this day darth thought it was an order.
Some one up thread said darth is not stupid. I disagree. He may not be dumb, but stupid and evil? 100% on both counts.
Bruce S
What you liberals don’t understand is that it takes balls to shoot down an innocent aircraft.
gogol's wife
@Emma:
Thank you.
PattyP
@Kola: Sorry about the bad link. But doing an image search for Valujet flight 592 will return loads of pictures showing that it’s not at all impossible for a large plane plummeting into the ground at high speed to pretty much completely disappear. Another commenter posted about the same flight so maybe their pic is working.
Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water
@Kola Noscopy: So what? 18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, and 20% believe in alien abductions. What people believe doesn’t change what actually happened.
And you’re quoting a Zogby poll? If you’re going to troll, do better than that
eemom
Timmeh, you may get a better reaction if you switch over to your “John Cole is gay” theory. I’m jussayinzall.
Kola Noscopy
@eemom:
???
Shelton Lankford
@Kola Noscopy: Kola, the proof that 9/11 was a huge psyop is overwhelming. These clowns are locked into “whatever the gummint says” and won’t be moved. The spring-loaded reaction is ridicule and fact-free dismissal. Engaging with questions about what really happened that day and how two aircraft were able to knock down three buildings – well it’s just not done in these parts.
eemom
@Kola Noscopy:
sorry. Case of mistaken identity.
Dazedandconfused
For the love of pete, folks, the military did not ignore Cheney’s order.
The full order was to shoot down airliners that were not responding or not following orders. Had any been left in the air at the time, the clearance to fire would have been given.
Since airliners have no defensive capability whatsoever, the order to get close enough for positive tail number identification hardly either a mystery or proof that the military was refusing the order.
Jeeez….
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Shelton Lankford:
Jesus Christ. Troofers get ignored or mocked because their alternative scenarios have no better (and in most cases much worse) grounding in reality. My favorite is the guy who claims the planes fired missiles into the buildings right before impact.
I’d love to know how someone mounted a missile to the wing of a civilian airliner without anyone catching on before the plane left the ground; the ground crew didn’t notice? The staff at the gate didn’t notice? Were they all bought off? Silenced?
Do the math. The kinetic energy of an airliner hitting a building at a couple of hundred miles an hour is equivalent to several hundred kilograms of TNT. Add several thousand gallons of burning jet fuel on top of that. All you need is for a few critical support members to soften, and the whole thing comes crashing down. No mystery. No conspiracy. Just tragedy.
Shelton Lankford
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
Gee, monkey, Where’d you get them physics? Why do you suppose steel frame buildings all just decided to succumb to fire for the first time in history on the same day? What are you? A coincidence theorist?
Jet fuel is kerosene, not some super duper steel melter. And the strawman missile story is designed to sound ridiculous. Why don’t you do some reading? David Ray Griffin wrote ten books. Pick one.
Oh, and WTC 7 wasn’t hit by a plane – came down in ~7 seconds. 20 minutes after CNN and BBC announced it (while it was visible over the shoulder of the newsmodel).
Less Popular Tim
@cckids:
crap, how about a “Spoiler Alert,” geez
CarolDuhart
I always read about the jet fuel. Doesn’t anybody realize that a typical skyscraper has first of all, dozens of cans of accellerants such as spray cans, gas lines, and other chemicals, all of which have an ignition temperature lower than jet fuel? Take a look at the typical cleaning closet in an office building and the copious warnings on all of the cleaning products-do not puncture or expose to high heat. The heat generated by a plane crash into the building will create secondary fires from wall to wall, instantly igniting everything from paper to volatile chemicals which feed into jet fuel fires. It’s like what happens when you light a grill with charcoal and lighter fluid and keep adding fuel to that fire steadily. The temperature increases and increases. And this was a multi-story fire, consuming everything, so the fire kept getting added to constantly and getting hotter and hotter. Not only that, but the damage would have already weakened several of the support columns so that they were broken and thinner than normal anyway.
Truthers. Ignoring common sense for 10 years.