Texas tea: 9/11 becomes an election issue
President Bush on 9/11
How many ironies can you pack into a single campaign?
The current governor of Texas, who replaced George W. Bush when the latter went off to destroy the country … sorry, to be appointed … sorry again, to become president … is a secessionist. He’s also the front-runner (hey, it’s Texas.) His main oppnent, and let me get this right, Kay Bailey Hutchison for some strange reason has no “n” before the “s” in her last name, but she does have the backing of Dick Cheney (hey, I wonder if she had to swear allegiance to Satan to get that … but I digress…) But even Cheney’s dark hand is not enough to keep a tea partier from nipping at Kay Bee’s heels. The tea partier in question, Debra Medina, first got the love, and then the scorn, of Glenn Beck, he of the 9/12 tea party parallel movement, after she didn’t come down forcefully enough in defense of the Bush administration amid lingering questions by some Americans about the official story behind 9/11 (or threaten to throw those damned “trufers” into gitmo.) Read more
Reracked: Bush/Rumsfeld could have gotten Bin Laden in 2001
… but of course, they let him get away:
A Senate Foreign Relations Committee report issued this weekend says that al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden “was within our grasp” when he was “cornered” in the forbidding mountains of Tora Bora in December, 2001 under intense U.S. bombardment.
… The Senate report says that while bin Laden was writing his last will and testament on December 14, “Fewer than 100 American commandos were on the scene with their Afghan allies and calls for reinforcements to launch an assault were rejected.” Read more
Grassley on KSM trial: ‘if the beard doesn’t fit, you must acquit!’
Accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad pre, and post-beard.
Chuck Grassley sets a new marker for stupid:
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) offered a stern warning for Eric Holder on Wednesday when addressing the attorney general’s confidence that he would get a conviction in civilian court for 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: Remember O.J. Simpson.
The Iowa Republican, speaking at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which Holder was testifying, raised the specter of a sympathetic jury letting KSM off on some sort of judicial technicality. To drive the point home, he recalled what happened roughly 15 years ago with the “Juice”.
“I don’t know how you can make a statement that failure to convict is not an option, when you have got juries in this country,” said Grassley. “I think a lot of Americans thought O.J. Simpson ought to have been convicted for murder rather than be in jail for what he is jail for now… I’m a farmer not a lawyer but I just want to make that observation.”
Permission to roll over now, Johnny Cochran.
9/11 suspects to finally be tried
Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, accused 9/11 ringleader, as he reportedly looks now. (AP)
After seven years of the Bush administration arresting paint ball afficionadoes, wayward gang members, and oddly religioned karate-men, we’re finally going to see justice done to some of the people actually involved in 9/11. And isn’t that a change of pace… Read more
Eight years on, 9/11 still matters
There’s a museum, there will be solemn ceremonies … but eight years to the day after the terror attacks in Washington, New York and Pennsylvania, September 11 is perhaps most significant for the way it fundamentally changed this country. After the attacks, this nation lurched from freedom ts fear; as millions of frightened Americans dropped their rugged individualism in favor or acceptance of almost anything government wanted to do: from domestic surveillance to indefinite detention of American citizens, to war and even torture. In many ways, 9/11 officially canceled the 90s — the dot com “boom” era, when all things seemed possible. Read more
Time to throw out the 9/11 report?
Robert Windrem’s TDB report not only throws a bright light on Dick Cheney’s role in pushing for the waterboarding of detainees in order to make them confess to a fantasy link between Iraq and al-Qaida … which is bad enough. But page two of the piece contains information that might be just as damning, this time, of the 9/11 Commission…
An extensive analysis I conducted as a reporter for NBC News of the 9/11 Commission’s Final Report and its monograph on terrorist travel showed that much of what was reported about the planning and execution of the terror attacks on New York and Washington was based on the CIA’s interrogations of high-ranking al Qaeda operatives who had been subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
More than one-quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of al Qaeda operatives subjected to the now-controversial interrogation techniques. In fact, information derived from the interrogations was central to the 9/11 Report’s most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks.
The NBC analysis also showed—and agency and commission staffers concur—there was a separate, second round of interrogations in early 2004, specifically conducted to answer new questions from the 9/11 Commission after its lawyers had been left unsatisfied by the agency’s internal interrogation reports.
Human-rights advocates, including Karen Greenberg of New York University Law School’s Center for Law and Security and Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, have said that, at the least, the 9/11 Commission should have been more suspect of the information derived under such pressure.
Philip Zelikow, who led the 9/11 commission as its executive director, is the same guy who authored the “anti-torture memo” that was buried by the Bushies, and who is now calling for an independent investigation into Bush-era torture. He now says:
“We were not aware, but we guessed, that things like that were going on. We were wary…we tried to find different sources to enhance our credibility.”
Credibility? What credibility? The fact is, that now even the timeline and explanation of events surrounding 9/11 is tainted by torture. If we cannot trust the commission’s reconstruction of events, and the means of getting that reconstruction included the same techniques Dick Cheney wanted used to justify a phony case for war with Iraq, what other conclusion can you come to other than that the fruits of that poisoned tree are ALL bad, and we really don’t know what happened on 9/11, or who indeed, was ultimately responsible…?
Where are they now? Louis Freeh
Bill Clinton’s onetime FBI director, who famously threw his former boss under the bus over 9/11, which by the way, he owned the domestic lead-up on from 1993 when the first WTC attack happened, right through 2001 when the second one did, including all the missed opportunities to track the alleged suspects in this country … has a new job: he’s the lawyer to the Bush family’s best pals, the Saudi royal family, specifically, our terrorist financing, oil price fixing pal, Prince “Bandar Bush” Bin Sultan. I caught part of his act on “Frontline” tonight, as he defended the apparent routine, multi-billion dollar bribery of his client by British arms dealer BAE. Nice work if you can get it. Catch the complete Frontline episode here. From a related LATimes story:
Former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh says $2 billion that flowed from a British arms manufacturer to U.S. bank accounts controlled by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then Saudi ambassador to the U.S., was not a bribe, but was instead part of a complex barter involving the exchange of Saudi oil for British fighter jets.
The transfer of funds to accounts at Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C., has come under scrutiny as the Justice Department continues an international corruption investigation involving British arms manufacturer BAE Systems. Freeh, who is now a lawyer and consultant for Bandar, made his comments to the Public Broadcasting Service for a “Frontline” documentary to be broadcast this evening. Bandar is now a national security advisor to the Saudi king. He has denied any wrongdoing, as have other Saudi officials.
Freeh said that a 1985 treaty between Britain and Saudi Arabia allowed the trade of oil for weapons. BAE signed an $86-billion contract with the Saudis under the provisions of the treaty, and the funds that flowed between Britain and the Bandar-controlled bank accounts in the U.S. may have come from the sale of Saudi oil under the terms of the contract. As part of the deal, BAE also supplied an Airbus 340 plane, which for years has been used by Bandar.
By Bandar, we’re talking “Bandar Bush,” seen here in a previous “Frontline” interview defending a wee bit of corruption:
The Robert Gibbs funnies: Rush wasn’t available
Gibbsy hits Rush and Darth Cheney (whose outrageous “stuff happens” interview on CNN ruined my otherwise pleasant weekend) all in one snark:
Bravo!
When Travis attacks: the 911 call
Connecticut authorities have released the 911 call in the Travis the chimp human attack. According to the NYDN:
The 15-minute recording captures the bizarre horror of Monday’s attack, which left a 55-year-old woman critically injured and the 200-pound ape dead in a hail of police gunfire.
“Hurry, please! He ripped her face off,” the ape’s frantic owner, Sandy Herold, 70, is heard telling the dispatcher on the tapes released last night.
“Listen to me, you have to shoot him.”
The terrifying screeches of Travis the chimpanzee are heard as he mercilessly pounces on Herold’s pal, Charla Nash.
“He killed her!” Herold told the dispatcher. “He ripped her apart. He tried attacking me. How fast can you get here?”
The dispatcher sounds incredulous as Herold describes how she had to stab the burly ape and only aggravated him.
“He’s eating her,” Herold screamed. “Please have them go faster.”
When cops arrived at Herold’s Stamford home, she can be heard yelling for them to “Shoot him!”
Nash was so disfigured that a cop on the scene mistook her for a man, telling the dispatcher, “He’s got no face.”
Fighting back tears Tuesday, Herold mourned the death of her beloved chimp and expressed concern for her friend.
“He was all I had,” Herold said outside her home.
Scary stuff! … um … question: WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD YOU HAVE A CHIMP IN YOUR HOUSE THAT YOU FEED WINE AND XANAX TO???? (Ahem. ) My dog weighs about 3 pounds, is less than a foot tall, and HE would attack people if he got loose. Having a 200 pound chimpanzee in the crib just strikes me as, shall we say, short sighted.
Meanwhile, cue the Morgan Fairchild reaction:
“This is not at all the personality I worked with,” Fairchild told the Daily News. “It was like having a very bright child on the set that wanted to be a part of everything. He was just an amiable little guy, friendly and just loved to be the center of attention.”
Yep. We’re going to hell in a handbasket. (Carrie Donovan, the fabulous former New York Times Magazine fashion editor who starred in the Old Navy commercials with Fairchild, passed away in 2001. Otherwise, she too would be devastated.)
Here’s the audio of the 911 call. Is it just me, or does the dispatcher sound like he thinks its a joke?
Meanwhile, the truly stupid among us are calling in death threats to the chimp’s owner because … wait for it … they’re mad that Travis was killed. Seriously.
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Tragedy near Buffalo: audio of flight 3407
50 people are confirmed dead in a fiery prop plane crash into a neighborhood near Buffalo, New York. The final interaction between Colgan Air flight 3407 and the tower at Buffalo Airport. Hat tip to The News Bizarre.
Meanwhile, it turns out that one of the 50 people killed in the crash (including one on the ground) was the widow of a 9/11 victim:
One of the passengers killed when a turboprop passenger plane crashed near Buffalo, New York, was the widow of a businessman who died in the September 11 attacks, relatives said today.Beverly Eckert, 54, had been travelling to Buffalo for a weekend marking what would have been her late husband’s 58th birthday, her sister told the Buffalo News. “We know she was on that plane,” Sue Bourque told the newspaper. “And now she’s with him.”
Eckert’s husband, Sean Rooney, was a Buffalo native and she was heading to the city from Newark airport in New Jersey to celebrate his birthday with family members, as well as to present a scholarship award at a local high school set up in Rooney’s honour.
Rooney was working for Aon, a reinsurance and consulting firm, on the 105th floor of the World Trade Centre’s south tower, the second of the two to be struck by a plane. He telephoned his wife to say he had made several attempts to escape using stairs but had been beaten back by heat and smoke. The couple talked about their life together before the call ended with the sounds of a loud explosion.
Eckert continued to live in their home in Stamford, Connecticut, and became joint chair of the Voices of September 11 group, which assists victims’ families and collects testimony of the events of the day.
More on Eckert from the Buffalo News.
Continental Airlines, for which Colgan Air operated the flight, has put up links to additional information.
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