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Flurry of Calls Among Saudi Staff and Spy Coincided with 9/11 Hijackers’ Arrival

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Re: Flurry of Calls Among Saudi Staff and Spy Coincided with 9/11 Hijackers’ Arrival

#81

Post by AtlasBarfed »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #76
thematrixturtle wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GP's point is that 9/11 was turned into an excuse to invade Iraq, even though there was no actual connection.

My feeling (I'm not an American) is that America got attacked and partly lost its mind and partly just had to lash out at somebody in retaliation to keep up its deterrence as a superpower. That climate made the Iraq invasion look like a good idea at the time. As far as I understood it, 9/11 was never stated as an excuse to invade Iraq (as opposed to Afghanistan). At best as a reason to take the region more seriously.…

Anyone with a modicum of awareness of politics at the time knew the Bush administration:

1) wanted to be in a war, since it historically makes the administration more significant

2) wanted to invade Iraq to "finish Dad's business" (and show him up)

3) oil

4) military industrial complex loves war

Sadly, #3 is the most sane reason we got in that war.

Oh yeah, and Halliburton made a mint on Iraq war support. The corruption was that blatant.

Re: Flurry of Calls Among Saudi Staff and Spy Coincided with 9/11 Hijackers’ Arrival

#82

Post by VictorPath »

Eigen7 wrote: post #63

This is nothing more than US government pressuring the Saudi government ahead of the planned Biden visit. Obviously if the Saudi had been there involved in 9/11 directly or indirectly they would have been a invaded the next day. It’s no secret that Al Qeada and the Saudis are sword enemies that been fighting each other for decades. The US-Saudi relations during at the time was stellar and the Saudis would have to hav…

> Obviously if the Saudi had been there involved in 9/11 directly or indirectly they would have been a invaded the next day

9/11 happened because al-Qaeda said the US had already had invaded "Saudi" Arabia eleven years earlier. 9/11 was successful in that it was the catalyst for removing US military bases from Saudi Arabia within two years of 9/11.

Re: Flurry of Calls Among Saudi Staff and Spy Coincided with 9/11 Hijackers’ Arrival

#83

Post by ncmncm »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #76
thematrixturtle wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GP's point is that 9/11 was turned into an excuse to invade Iraq, even though there was no actual connection.

My feeling (I'm not an American) is that America got attacked and partly lost its mind and partly just had to lash out at somebody in retaliation to keep up its deterrence as a superpower. That climate made the Iraq invasion look like a good idea at the time. As far as I understood it, 9/11 was never stated as an excuse to invade Iraq (as opposed to Afghanistan). At best as a reason to take the region more seriously.…

Cheney did, in fact, frequently express such a connection, even long after it was shown to be false.

Re: Flurry of Calls Among Saudi Staff and Spy Coincided with 9/11 Hijackers’ Arrival

#84

Post by streamlining »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #64
BMc2020 wrote: post #39

My memory of the post 9-11 investigation: Weeks 0-3: The investigation can lead anywhere as long as it does not lead to Saudia Arabia. Weeks 3+: The investigation can lead anywhere as long as it leads to Iraq.

I don't remember a direct link being made between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. There always was mumbling about Saddam supporting terrorism, and Iraq being part of generally the same problem. Not exactly a wrong supposition, though the conclusion was quite disastrous.

No post body was provided.

Re: Flurry of Calls Among Saudi Staff and Spy Coincided with 9/11 Hijackers’ Arrival

#85

Post by AtlasBarfed »

lovehashbrowns wrote: post #54
hackernewds wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best case scenario, these alerts happen so often that 99% are false positives. They regarded the 9/11 as a false positive as well. Not that that's an excuse for such a grave "error" but at least a thesis against the conspiracy theory

It was a lot worse than that. This would’ve been a credible threat that various intelligence agencies in the US were aware of. Al-Queda was already involved in other terrorist attacks and was known to US intelligence. All the different agencies had info on a lot of the hijackers but they all kept it to themselves or the info wasn’t passed up the ladder. The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright is one of the best books on…

I would love to damn the Bush Administration of ignoring the warnings so they had a casus belli. But the Bush Administration hated the clintons so much that they ignored all intelligence handovers and warnings that came from holdover administration personnel. In this case it was incompetence.

But they woke up REAL FAST to using it to their ends and desires.

Re: Flurry of Calls Among Saudi Staff and Spy Coincided with 9/11 Hijackers’ Arrival

#86

Post by ars »

vaidhy wrote: post #49
ars wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone ignores Yemen for the same reason they ignore Syria: It's bad guys attacking bad guys. Edit: I appear to be wrong about this: America would not support either side in those wars, so they just leave them alone to fight.

Really?? I thought US is supplying most of the weapons and logistics for Saudi Arabia to fight in Yemen while Russia is supporting Iran which supports the Houthis. In the end, both sides are bombing the hell out of that country which has no recourse.

I looked into it, just in case I was wrong, and it's certainly not "most of the", but there is some American support for Saudi Arabia fighting Yemen, so I was partially wrong.

Re: Flurry of Calls Among Saudi Staff and Spy Coincided with 9/11 Hijackers’ Arrival

#87

Post by lovehashbrowns »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #85
lovehashbrowns wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a lot worse than that. This would’ve been a credible threat that various intelligence agencies in the US were aware of. Al-Queda was already involved in other terrorist attacks and was known to US intelligence. All the different agencies had info on a lot of the hijackers but they all kept it to themselves or the info wasn’t passed up the ladder. The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright is one of the best books on…

I would love to damn the Bush Administration of ignoring the warnings so they had a casus belli. But the Bush Administration hated the clintons so much that they ignored all intelligence handovers and warnings that came from holdover administration personnel. In this case it was incompetence. But they woke up REAL FAST to using it to their ends and desires.

Of course they woke up! And now we'll likely be stuck with things like the PATRIOT Act for the rest of this country's existence. Just can't ever see it taken away.

Re: Flurry of Calls Among Saudi Staff and Spy Coincided with 9/11 Hijackers’ Arrival

#88

Post by kmonsen »

daniel-cussen wrote: post #75
nl wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact the biggest obstacle to an intercessor on a plane would be the other passengers interceding on behalf of Muhammed Ata, to basically protect the stewardess from his boxcutter from Muhammed Ata from the intercessor. Like the terrorist isn't crazy, he's just a terrorist, you're crazy because you're protecting us from annihilation. Apart from that, apart from the other passengers insisting I accept a stewardess…

> new and unexpected. So on a South Tower flight, supposing I weren't a child at the time and were the man I am now, like you know the time of day, you know they're flying north, you know they're not turning the plane around to Cuba, which is what the itinerary looks like but like but it's not exactly it. And thirty minutes is an eternity for that. So the key is flashing on the truth, so there's like a couple times i…

You said you were a child at the time so I think it’s hard to understand the world before you. Everyone expected a hacked plane would land you the passengers would most likely be safe. From everything the passengers on the first plane knew the best way to survive was to do nothing.

Re: Flurry of Calls Among Saudi Staff and Spy Coincided with 9/11 Hijackers’ Arrival

#89

Post by mardifoufs »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #67
davidw wrote: post #36

What with them not doing much about pumping more oil in moment of crisis, I'm starting to think they are not very good allies.

They aren't Putin.

What's going on in Yemen is pretty similar to what's going on in ukraine right now. And the KSA also has a putin-like tendency of sending death squads to murder international opposition.

The only reason why they seem to not be as bad for westerners is because middle eastern lives are given almost 0 value here in the west.

So you'll always get some hand wavy rationalisation to justify not doing anything about the KSA, because eh it's a complex situation! While at the same time claiming that the human cost of war is so atrocious and unexcusable that nothing is off the table, no punishment is severe enough, and everyone needs to do something... when it's russian aggression.

When in reality both situations are just as bad and just as unexcusable. And man I know my comment has gone on a tangent, but the cognitive dissonance and the overt downplaying that comes with it just irks me. It's so blatant too: our side always deserves nuance, justification and contextualization ( whether it's us fully supporting the KSA regime or US/EU imperalism).

It's just so convenient, especially when you compare the passivity/downplaying in threads like this one to other discussions on the same website where people are unironically arguing that your average Joe should risk jail and torture to stop their government from killing people in their wars of aggression. But us? No; I mean we aren't as bad as putin, and death yemenis will just understand that

Re: Flurry of Calls Among Saudi Staff and Spy Coincided with 9/11 Hijackers’ Arrival

#90

Post by lamontcg »

mysockpuppet_07 wrote: post #80
hristov wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not officially known that the Saudi government provided support to the hijackers through Embassy officials and known agents. The currently accepted story is that the Saudi government has always tried to protect the US, has never been in cahoots with Osama bin Laden (at least after he became a terrorist) or Al Queda, and is just kind of unfortunate to have some crazies live on its soil. If this is true, it is ac…

It’s easy to forget that a central job of the Embassy was to support Saudis going to school and they had been providing this service formally and informally for many years and to many people -- the vast majority of whom went back to their community with an expanded outlook on life influenced by the tolerance and social freedoms of spending some formative years in the west. If the Embassy didn't know these guys were t…

It sounds like they wound up working with a "salafi fanatic" in the Saudi consulate in LA though.

At the very least it sounds like extremists had infiltrated into government positions and some of them provided critical assistance.

I'm not sure how much this changes the story that we already knew though. There's no evidence that anyone high up in the Saudi government was involved in plotting. The fact that their government could be riddled with religious fanatics isn't terribly surprising.

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