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(Note: The date on this post is intentional; it keeps this post pinned to the top. Thanks for asking!).

11/11/07 Update: Loose Change Final Cut has just been released and so we have not prepared a full debunking. Both James and I have many comments about the movie below and I started a thread over at JREF with some examples of mistakes in the film. Much of the rest of the information in this particular post concerns the earlier versions of Loose Change.

Because this blog is getting so much traffic from Google searches and referrals from various forums and Wikipedia, we decided to put one post up top to link to information our newest visitors are apparently looking for.

First, if you have not seen the film and want to watch it, be sure to watch Markyx's annotated version, which he very kindly named after this blog, Screw Loose Change. Markyx did a terrific job on this, and we strongly recommend watching this version rather than Dylan Avery's cut.

James has put together a list of major lies in Loose Change. Here's Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.

I compiled three very easily refuted lies in the movie. I also showed three tricks and distortions that are used throughout the film.

A friend of the blog named Mark Roberts (aka Gravy at the JREF forums) compiled this amazing Viewer's Guide to Loose Change, (now HTML) which includes a complete transcript of the movie, pictures and links that refute many of the claims, and which highlights the changes between Version 1 and Version 2.

The hot new film in 9-11 Denial is called 9-11 Mysteries. One of our JREF buddies, The Doc, has put together a rebuttal video called (you guessed it!) Screw 9-11 Mysteries, and assembled a viewers' guide to 9-11 Mysteries.

Many 9-11 Deniers focus on the collapse of World Trade Center 7, which fell at 5:20 PM on September 11, almost seven hours after the North Tower. I have devoted a fair amount of research to the topic of WTC 7. If you want a really detailed analysis of WTC 7, I recommend Mark Robert's WTC 7 and the Lies of the 9/11 Truth Movement.

If you'd like to discuss the ideas about 9-11 you've encountered here or elsewhere, another friend of the blog started a Screw Loose Change Forum. It's a very lively place with lots of opinion back and forth between both sides. There's also a Screw Loose Change MySpace page, with some animated commentary. Of course, we also welcome comments on our posts.

If you're looking for detailed rebuttals of other aspects of 9-11 Denial, I heartily recommend 9-11 Myths, Debunking 9-11 and Internet Detectives.

Markyx has also put together a video (note: graphic images and strong language) called 9-11 Deniers Speak. If you think Dylan Avery and Jim Fetzer have any respect for the victims of 9-11, just watch this film. There are five parts. Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V.
There's also a Google Video which is all in one part.

This should be enough to get you started debunking Loose Change to your friends. We have a lot more content below this post.

Notes on unusual terms/abbreviations: Looser (not a misspelling of Loser)=Believer in Loose Change. CT=Conspiracy Theory, Conspiracy Theorist. Truther=9-11 Conspiracy Theorist (all Loosers are Truthers, not all Truthers are Loosers). OS=Official Story. CD= Controlled Demoliton. LIHOP: Let It Happen On Purpose; theory that the government knew the 9-11 attacks were coming but allowed them to happen to further other goals of theirs. MIHOP: Made It Happen On Purpose; theory that the government planned and orchestrated the attacks. Most Truthers are MIHOP.

Update: Comments closed on this post, which is intended solely as a pointer. Because Haloscan will not let us close comments on a particular post, be forewarned: Don't leave a comment in this post or it will be deleted.

Update II: Note on comments: We maintain open comments on this blog, and so you will see lots of posts from people dissenting with our viewpoint on 9-11. We trust our readers to separate the good arguments from the bad arguments and come to their own conclusions. Links that you see in the comments are of course not endorsed by either James or Pat, and you should approach any link in the comments (as you should approach any link from the blog) with a healthy degree of skepticism.

More Mocking the Victims

Once again, these guys are seriously pissing me off. On 911 Blogger they recently posted this video of a conference in Canada with some truther nutters. The part I have watched thus far is AK Dewdney, famous for trying to use his cell phone on a Cessna. It is bad enough they mock the dead, but could they at least get the most basic facts straight?

I just want to point out that flight 175. It has just been admitted by the FBI that they discovered that Ted Olson was lying about his wife Barbara Olson phoning him from flight 175, so we can reduce that by one.

She was on flight 77 you moron.

On the basis of what I have learned about cell phone technology on the ground and in the air, I am ready to conclude, that those calls never happened. Oh well, if it never happened, who were all those people calling their relatives who were calling their friends. "Mark? Mom, is that you mom, yeah this is Mark Brigham."

It is Mark Bingham you complete waste of oxygen.

He continues a minute later.

The fakery, how to fake a cell phone call, if you are a fairly modern intelligence organization, you have access to the passenger lists, well before the flight. You have access to the phone numbers and you also have an easy ability to gain a wiretap if you need intel, so you can listen into those conversations days in advance, you can make recordings and finally there is a significant little piece of equipment called a voice modulator which has been on the market for almost twenty years which by changing no more than 3 settings you can imitate the timber, frequency and other key speech qualities of the human voice.

Oh really.

Mark Bingham was last to board the plane, having arrived late and nearly missed the flight. Bingham intrigues because he does not fit the image of the all-American hero quite as neatly as Todd Beamer, a family man from rural New Jersey with a Lord's Prayer bookmark in the Tom Clancy novel he had onboard.

A third of the passengers and crew were there by the slimmest of chances. Dahl had rescheduled to get home to Colorado to pick up his wife and take her to London for their wedding anniversary. Deborah Welsh had been a flight attendant for 25 years and hated early flights, but had agreed to trade shifts to oblige a colleague.

From MSNBC:

Jeremy Glick was supposed to have been on Flight 93 a day earlier, but missed the Monday flight after getting stuck in traffic on his way to Newark Airport.

Words cannot describe how disgusting these people are.

Update: Later this blithering idiot tries to explain the flight data recorder of United 93:

It looks like the flight data recorder was carried by another aircraft. Well, that's the question, was there another aircraft in the area? Yeah, there was a mysterious white twin engine jet aircraft which we have identified as an A-3 Thunderbolt, which is designed, described by Susan McElway (phonetic) and residents of the area as all white, it had two rear mounted engines it had a tailplane with two vertical rudders on either end of it and that is likely the aircraft that was carrying the flight data recorder.

An A-3 Thunderbolt? WTF? And even if this aircraft were there, why is he claiming the FDR came from it, did the pilot plunge his plane into the ground so it would have the appropriate information on it? Is he on crack?

Update from Gravy: Purported Flyover Witness Couldn't Have Seen It

The usual crack job of investigation (scroll down to bottom) by the CIT goofballs:

The witness had a clear view of flight 77's flight path towards the building, which he describes perfectly: a silver, commercial plane, about 50 feet high, by the light poles (which are at the cloverleaf).

It would have been impossible for him to have seen a "flyover," since the wall of the Pentagon towered more than 70 feet over him and the plane would have been on the opposite side of the building.

Incidentally Mark notes as follows:

By the way, had I known that David Ray Griffin was going to be a guest and would be given so much airtime, and that Ranke, Balsamo and Barrett would be given so little, I would have participated in the show.

That was my attitude as well, but as usual, Griffin did not take any questions from anybody other than the host, who lobbed beachballs towards the "Guru" of 9-11 "Truth". Has Griffin ever had to face a hostile interviewer?

The Great Derangement

Rolling Stones journalist Matt Taibbi is known for writing one of the best parodies of the 9/11 truth movement:

CHENEY: Of course, just toppling the Twin Towers will never be enough. No one would give us the war mandate we need if we just blow up the Towers. Clearly, we also need to shoot a missile at a small corner of the Pentagon to create a mightily underpublicized additional symbol of international terrorism -- and then, obviously, we need to fake a plane crash in the middle of f***ing nowhere in rural Pennsylvania.

RUMSFELD: Yeah, it goes without saying that the level of public outrage will not be sufficient without that crash in the middle of f***ing nowhere.

CHENEY: And the Pentagon crash -- we'll have to do it in broad daylight and say it was a plane, even though it'll really be a cruise missile.

Now it he has apparently dedicated an entire book to the subject of right wing religious fundamentalists, which also discusses the fact that truthers share many of the same traits of religious zealots, something I have been arguing for years.

In his new book, "The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire," Taibbi embarks on a journey through contemporary America, a place that he believes is on the verge of a psychological collapse. Reporting for Rolling Stone, Taibbi goes undercover as a born-again Christian to investigate John Hagee's apocalyptic mega-church. He also documents his contentious experiences with members of the 9/11 Truth Movement, whose conspiracy theories he portrays as leftist parallels to the delusional beliefs of the religious right. Taibbi sees Americans on both sides of the political spectrum reverting to a new tribalism that makes communication and mutual understanding near impossible. In a book that is as darkly funny as it is depressing, Taibbi assails every aspect of modern-day America.

Click on the link for an interview with the author.

Update: Walter Ego points us to an MSNBC interview with the author.

Where Old Troofers Go To Die

Last year Mark Dice, the idiot formerly known as John Conner, called it quits from the 9/11 truth movement. Well, apparently the Jaywalker for 9/11 Truth is back, with another crusade:

Seems that one person's smut is another person's morning latte.

A Christian group based in San Diego found grounds for outrage over the new retro-style logo for Starbucks Coffee.

The Resistance says the new image "has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute," Mark Dice, founder of the group, said in a news release. "Need I say more? It's extremely poor taste, and the company might as well call themselves Slutbucks."

The group, which claims more than 3,000 members nationwide and has found a place on the fringe advancing various conspiracy theories, is calling for a national boycott of the coffee-selling giant.

Now as both a Seattlite and a heterosexual male, I am highly offended by this.

A Simple Question for the Pentagon No-Planers

Why?

I understand why the conspiracy theorists all want to get rid of the planes; they (or more precisely, their pilots) are highly inconvenient to their theories. We can believe that Arab terrorists would martyr themselves for jihad; this is fairly commonplace in the Middle East these days. What we cannot understand is why American pilots would intentionally fly their planes into the WTC, Pentagon, and a strip mine in Pennsylvania. Hence, as I have pointed out in the past, almost all the conspiracy fantasists are effectively no planers.

But why would the government not hit the Pentagon with a plane? Most of the 9-11 Truthers do believe that planes were used at the World Trade Center. Granted, many do not believe they were Flights 11 and 175, but they accept that some sort of planes, possibly refueling tankers, were used in those attacks.

So why didn't they use the same type of plane for the Pentagon strike? Was the "planes" line item for the mission over budget? If you think about it, the idea of using a missile or even another type of plane makes least sense at the Pentagon, where you have a lot of military types who know what a missile strike looks like and a lot of pilots and former pilots who are very skilled at identifying aircraft.

Welcome 9-11 Skeptic Tank Forum

Our new JREF Forum buddy Dan K. Stanley grabs a rifle and starts shooting into the barrel. Welcome, Dan!

Off-topic request: I heard a few days ago that Paula Gloria was on with Howard Stern. Any details or audio would be appreciated.

Update: Longtime commenter BG points out that Paula's appearance is scheduled for next Monday. Thanks Bill!

Osama Takes Responsibility Once Again

Yeah, I know, it is fake, blah blah blah...

"The Palestinian cause has been the main factor that, since my early childhood, fueled my desire, and that of the 19 freemen (Sept. 11 bombers), to stand by the oppressed, and punish the oppressive Jews and their allies," the al Qaeda chief said.

Air America Look Back

Ron Wieck did pretty well considering, the host kept on interrupting him and throwing a fit anytime he said something mildly insulting of the conspiracy theorists. Needless to say he did not show the same indignation when David Ray Griffin accused the military, police, firefighters and FBI of throwing ground up body parts around the Pentagon. Griffin managed to have one of the most bizarre statements, when he claimed that 152 witnesses to flight 77 crashing into the Pentagon was not definitive enough. Oh please, Griffin claims definitive proof in the New Pearl Harbor that it was a missile, even though he does not have a single witness to that.

The CIT nutjobs are rather interesting with their earth shaking evidence. After 7 years they finally got their fly-over witness. Nevermind the guy sounded drunk, put the plane in an impossible location, and claimed there were 2 planes, that witness was definitive!

A little bit of backstory, both Pat and I got offers from Kevin Barrett to appear on the show (Kevin for some reason never showed up). Pat, as he publicly posted earlier, refused outright. I actually made an offer to Kevin that I would appear, provided he answer the questions posed to him by Mark Roberts.

Needless to say, he refused to almost immediately.

Jimmie,

Sorry you don't have the guts, or the evidence, to hold up your side of a debate.

I have never called for anyone's execution. I have merely called for the laws against treason and crimes against humanity to be enforced.

Nor do I hold the beliefs on UFOs and holocausts that you claim. Please retract your libelous statements.

I am not interested in wasting time on the megalomaniac and chronophage Mark "I know more about 9/11 than anyone in the world" Roberts. If he wants to debate on the radio, fine, bring him on. But like almost all of you, he's too cowardly to defend his beliefs in a debate.

If you really believed what you claimed to believe about 9/11, you would debate the facts. Clearly you do not, because you trade exclusively in insults.

If you know of anyone with enough courage (or foolhardiness) to attempt to mount a factual argument to defend the government's account, let me know.

Kevin

Dr. Kevin Barrett

Hey, I never said he believed in UFOs. It wouldn't surprise me, mind you, but I never said that.

David Ray Griffin Once Again Lies About the Victims of 9/11

To continue the David Ray Griffin interview I mentioned this morning. When he lies about abstract things, like the number of casualties in Afghanistan, I am annoyed, when he lies about real people, I get seriously pissed off. Later on 41:30 in, he starts claiming how the phone calls from the flight attendents are fake:

We've got other signs of this, I deal with this in later writings, that calls from stew... the flight attendants Amy Sweeney and Betty Ong, also there is very clear evidence that these were fabricated, and the have changed the story there, where as originally they were said to be made on cell phones, now they're said to have been made on a seatback phone.

Listen you lying senile *#^@, the phone call from Betty Ong was released as part of the Moussaoui trial. You don't need to speculate about it being faked, why don't you play it to the person she talked to in the last minutes of her life and ask him if it is fake? Why don't you ask her family members? Why don't you give it to an expert on audio forensics and ask him? Get off your fat lazy @#% and actually take a stand behind your accusations, rather than just slandering the dead.

And the only one to change the story was you. It was an airfone from the beginning, that is why she called another American Airlines employee, because it was an automatic free call. It even talks about the airfone call in the 9/11 Commission Report.

About five minutes after the hijacking began, Betty Ong contacted the American Airlines Southeastern Reservations Office in Cary, North Carolina, via an AT&T airphone to report an emergency aboard the flight. This was the first of several occasions on 9/11 when flight attendants took action outside the scope of their training, which emphasized that in a hijacking, they were to communicate with the cockpit crew. The emergency call lasted approximately 25 minutes, as Ong calmly and professionally relayed information about events taking place aboard the airplane to authorities on the ground.29

Air America Chatter

I'm still not appearing, but I have been quite amused by the chatter that is going on amongst the Troofers regarding this event. There is a rumor that they are going to provide the long-awaited "Pentagon Flyover" witness. No word yet on whether this is he:



Over at the Looser Forums, they're hyping the event:

He suggested Reheat, Anti-Sophist, Apathoid, Gravy, and Beachnut.

Of course whoever is willing to do it would have to be a real human as opposed to a screen-name so I guess we'll see if any of them are willing to put their name behind their claims!

Hilariously, the third member of the CIT gripes:

i'm still suspended for proving the 1993 WTC bombing was carried out by the FBI, but I was going to ask Ron if they were able to come up with someone other than Mark Roberts who isn't anonymous.......

Says the guy named "Domenick DiMaggio". I'm going to guess that's a screen name, because this guy's 91 years old:

Hi Alex! Hi Jason!

Alex Jones led off his program today talking about the RFID chip thing we discussed last night. Okay, Alex you were right about that one. But I don't buy that whole story about how the feds were going to turn your dentist dad into a human cyborg.



Hmmm. Actually, that does look a bit like my dentist.

Apparently Jason and Alex are going to talk about us in the opening of the next hour (in about 10 minutes). Hi guys!

Where Does David Ray Griffin Get His Facts?

I haven't listened to the whole thing, but David Ray Griffin was on Michel Chossudovsky's Internet radio show on Monday, spreading his normal woo. This bit is a new though.

Our best news commentator in this country is Keith Olbermann, and our leading candidate for president now is Barack Obama, and they both say that we need to get out of Iraq so that we can concentrate on Afghanistan, which is where the terrorists are who attacked America on 9/11. And we haven't been able to get them to focus on the fact that there is also no justification for this war in Afghanistan which has now cost several million lives.

Gee, and they wonder why the left won't embrace them fully. The claim that the US invasion of Afghanistan has cost several million lives is not only wrong, but horribly wrong. Lest we forget, the country was already at war when we invaded. Things are not great there, but they are actually better than before we were there. Even the most critical studies of the current war, place the number of casualties in the low thousands, three orders of magnitude below Griffin's claim.

Bob Bowman Laments the Fall of the Soviet Union

We haven't heard much from Mr. Bowman lately, but he was on Kevin Barrett's radio show on Tuesday. Mostly the same old repeated myths, but I was rather amused to hear his mournful description of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Well of course we got out of this predicament, because Gorbachev came in and took charge of the Soviet Union, and he didn't want to go down that path, he wanted to end the arms race, and institute a form of democracy into the Soviet Union, without losing their socialist safety net. And it was a difficult transition, and unfortunately he failed, but he did succeed in ending the arms race. I was in the Kremlin discussing with them how to do it in the 1980s, but what happened subsequently of course was that Yeltsin came and wanted to be a member of the club and wanted to introduce unfettered capitalism, threw away the social safety net altogether, which he did.

Yeah, he is just another middle-of-the-road guy.

Army Dumb

Now being a career Army Guardsman, I am as respectful of the military as it gets, and for the most part I believe that the average soldier has more common sense than Americans in general, but unfortunately that doesn't mean they are immune from woo.

You can't find a better example of this then that of Donald Buswell, a recently retired Army Sergeant First Class, profiled here in the Lone Star Inconoclast, most well known for Eric May's paranoid predictions.

I think he is trying to set a record for the most incoherent argument:

"And if they did put the bombs in the buildings and they were razed from inside, then what about the passenger manifests from those four planes? And what about the video tapes? And what about the perfect passport of Mohammed Atta flying out of the burning building and landing in the rubble? That’s just unbelievable ... Doesn’t make sense. But this information is coming from my government, so it has to have been spun.

First of all, it wasn't Atta's passport, and it didn't fall into the rubble. Secondly, that first sentence takes the term non sequitur to new heights.

Later he discusses the Pentagon:

"My logic and reasoning on this matter is sound. I’ve been looking at this thing for years, and there’s just no possible way the official story is accurate. The Pentagon is not a hardened structure; it was built during World War II. It is a weak structure. So linking the alleged plane at the Pentagon with this F4 jet angered me. It was insulting to me.

"I didn’t tailor the response in an offensive way. I simply said, ‘If the Pentagon were hit by a plane, there would be a 190-foot wingspan impact on the building, which there was not. There would be two large engine holes in the building, which there was not. There’d be tail wreckage, bodies and debris everywhere, but there wasn’t.

This is a new twist on things, normally they argue that the Pentagon was so hardened that there was no way a plane could damage it that much. Nobody ever said they were consistent. The wingspan of a 757 is only 124 feet by the way, while the hole on the bottom floor was around 90.

And later:

"When you study this subject like I have, you uncover things from time to time that make you say, ‘wow.’ You find things that just add fuel to the fire. When I wrote that e-mail, I didn’t know this at the time, but on Sept. 10, 2001, SECDEF Rumsfeld said in a press conference, ‘Hey, we’ve lost $2.3 trillion dollars.’

Yeah, that is what he said "Hey, we've lost $2.3 trillion dollars". Nevermind the redundant use of the word dollars, this thing has been debunked so many times, I am not getting into it again.

Korey Rowe News

First, apparently the movie that Jason is making is in collaboration with Korey; according to Justin Martell:

Unfortunately, Daniel Sunjata will no longer be hosting the event due to conflicts with his schedule. The event will now be hosted by myself and Michael Jackman. Jason Bermas, because he has been working very hard on his new film, will not be able to join us. Instead, Korey Rowe will appear in his place to screen 15 minutes from their upcoming release, "Fabled Enemies."

Hmmm, sounds like they're going to stick with the conspiracy theories for awhile. Korey gave an extemporaneous talk at a university recently when a planned screening of Final Cut had technical difficulties, and I gotta say, he's getting much more polished. He definitely seemed like the Looser who had the most discomfort in the spotlight in the past, but he's either growing more confident with the material, or he's been getting some acting lessons. I can't locate the video right now, but one of the things he talked about was RFID chips in soldiers. Okay, sounds pretty wacky, but then our old buddy Unsecured Coins checks in:

I'm getting chipped. I got selected for the 1% of combat troops in my Division to get one to monitor "stress patterns" for the upcoming deployment. I get to go to DACH next week for a simple 30 minute procedure to have this damn chip put in my right arm. So I have a date when it goes in, but no date when it comes out. I don't wanna say that is is for nefarious purposes but I don't see a reason to monitor my stress levels prior to a deployment I'm not going on until another 9-10 months.

Congrats, moon bats. you were right about something for once.

Put me in the "that's pretty creepy but not all that surprising for the military" camp. My dad loved to tell the story about the time he got cited for damaging Army property because he got a sunburn while on leave.

Why I Won't Be Appearing On Air America's Clout

Air America is doing a show on the "Pentagon Flyover" theory espoused by Craig Ranke, Rob Balsamo and others. I won't be appearing on the show, for several reasons:

1. I wasn't invited. No shock there; the last time a Truther invited me to be on a radio show was my debate with Jason Bermas on the Rob Bishop show, which garnered record ratings. Record ratings and no invite back? I'll take that as a compliment.

2. The Pentagon Flyover theories are so absurd that Reprehensor, who allows conspiracy theories about everything under the sun has decided to ban them at 9-11 Blogger, the flagship of the "Truthers".

3. One of the participants in the Air America debate will be Kevin "Hang 'Em High" Barrett. I have no intention of discussing anything with a Holocaust Denier.

4. I'll let Mark Roberts give the other reason:

I believe it is deeply unethical to broadcast and perpetuate the 9/11 claims of a few kooks, especially when these people have directly accused 9/11 victims, witnesses, and investigators of cowardice and lying. There is absolutely no justification for giving these people the attention they crave. It serves no rational cause. None.

Further, these people will never get the help they need if their fantasies and their disparaging of victims are encouraged. For that reason, I believe that giving them this attention is doubly unethical.

Amen. Be sure to read the entire post by Mark; he is truly an amazing individual.

Let me suggest something here to the Truthers in our audience, particularly those who disagree with the Pentagon Flyover theory, like Arabesque, Russ Pickering, and Adam of Caustic Logic. These folks are going to be on Air America tomorrow representing your movement. It is incumbent upon you to take on this mission. I don't care if Craig Ranke and Rob Balsamo become the new faces of 9-11 "Truth"; quite frankly that would represent progress to us.

Ace Baker on Hardfire, Part II

I have not had a chance to watch this video as yet, but I am sure that Steve Wright did as excellent a job as he did in the initial version. Kudos to Ron for setting this up.

The Nutters on the Gitmo Defendants

Alex Floum, on his blog and 9/11 Blogger, is getting all excited over one charge being dropped against a defendant at what he claims are show trials at Gitmo. Although this begs the question, if these trials are purely for show, why bother to drop the charges? Among other bizarre claims he says that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is actually dead, implying the one at Gitmo is someone else. Well you know, every time the news has reported such and such terrorist is dead, it is always true after all. Well, at least the media is 100% accurate whenever they want it to be.

In any case, possibly the most bizarre claim he makes is from a Paul Craig Roberts, whom he calls an "influential conservative". Yeah, in 1985 perhaps, now he is relegated to making osbcure comments on LewRockwell.com with Ron Paul's racist buddies. In this case, Roberts makes the following claim:

The six that the United States are bringing to "trial" include two child soldiers for the Taliban and a car pool driver who allegedly drove Osama bin Laden.

The Taliban did not attack the United States. The child soldiers were fighting in an Afghan civil war. The United States attacked the Taliban. How does that make Taliban soldiers terrorists who should be locked up and abused in Gitmo and brought before a kangaroo military tribunal? If a terrorist hires a driver or a taxi, does that make the driver a terrorist? What about the pilots of the airliners who brought the alleged 9-11 terrorists to the United States? Are they guilty, too?

Floum himself adds:

It turns out that they are not "Al Qaeda terrorists", but a bunch of kids, a car pool driver, and others who may have been involved in a civil war within their own country, but not a war against the United States.

So is this true, are these 6 largely made up of native Afghan teenagers? Well, this should be pretty easy to check, their names and pasts have been released, and the press has done many stories on them, such as this one in the New York Times.

So after about 10 minutes of research one can come up with this:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: Kuwaiti, 43, educated in North Carolina, senior member of Al Qaeda, admitted to planning 9/11 attacks before being captured. Uncle of Ramzi Yousef, who carried out 1993 bombings.

Ramzi bin Al-Shibh: Yemeni, 36, roommate of Mohammed Atta, transfered money repeatedly to hijackers, attempted unsuccesfully to get US visa.

Mustafa al-Hawsawi: Saudi, age 39 Sent money to the 9/11 hijackers.

Walid bin 'Attash: Saudi, 29 Involved in 1998 embassy bombing in Nairobi. Captured in Pakistan in 2003.

Ali Abdulaziz Ali: Pakistani, 31, Nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, attempted to join 9/11 hijackers but was denied visa.

Muhammad al-Kahtani: Saudi, thought to be muscle hijacker, but was denied entrance to US at Orlando Airport due to lack of return ticket.

So which of these guys is a poor innocent Afghan teenager who got unjustly captured by the Americans?

Farewell to Conspiracy Smasher

Our buddy the 9-11 Conspiracy Smasher has apparently closed up shop and removed his blog. He (I assume) did a great job over there and we appreciate his efforts.

Thanks to emailer Dean for pointing this out.

Smooth Operators

Our buddy Mikey Metz is featured in this video, apparently from the We Are Beating Up Girls in Wheelchairs crew (or some Dutch "Truther"):



There are apparently supposed to be 13 videos in the series; but quite a few are not available. Here's one that appears to pull all the 13 "operators" together. Mark Roberts apparently is included. Stephen Lemons appears briefly, as do I (I'm the fat dude in the sunglasses at about 2:29). Ron Wieck also makes an appearance.



But aside from us "evil" debunkers, quite a few "Truthers" get thrown under the bus in this video series. My old debate opponent Lynn Pentz has her own chapter as does "Hangman" Barrett:



It's typical of the paranoid nutters that they mix in the real opposition with their fellow fruitcakes.

Toothpaste and Shampoo, Haha!

David Ray Griffin was interviewed on some public access TV program the other day. In addition to his usual asshattery, Griffin commented sarcastically (about 3:10 into the video) on the fact that we can no longer take a full tube of toothpaste or shampoo with us on a plane.

Today, the Daily Mail reports on the trials of the London liquid terror plotters:

Footage of the devastating impact of home-made liquid bombs eight British Muslims allegedly plotted to set off on transatlantic airliners was shown at their trial today.

Protective 12mm thick laminated glass shattered and polyethylene panels surrounding the test were left strewn on the floor following the filmed controlled explosion.

Judging by the photos it is impossible to tell whether it would have fatally damaged a plane, but it certainly looks like it would have been quite devastating to anybody inside the cabin.

Aldo: Not a Disinfo Agent

Although his "proof" that he's not is laughable:

According to several of our detractors and including the implications at 911blogger, people are insinuating that we and/or the witnesses we present are actually disinformation operatives or "counter-intelligence".

If that is the case, then bring us in.

Contact the authorities and bring us all in.

Let's try and imagine the process here:

Troofer A: Hey New World Order Agent, we're performing a citizen's arrest on Aldo Marquis, who is clearly a disinformation operative.

New World Order Agent: Well, you caught him fair and square; we'll take him out back and chop his head off with a Chinese-made guillotine.

Nope, that's not how it goes at all. We're all trained here at the New World Order to deny, deny, deny. If you were to march Aldo into NWO HQ and insist that he was disinfo, we'd start doing the "He's not disinfo, he's just pining for the fjords," routine, and we're better at it than Michael Palin.

Second, our actual disinfo agents are much better at concealing themselves than Aldo and Craig. Our actual disinfo agents are the most trusted people in 9-11 Truth, not marginalized characters like the CIT dudes.

Stalkers for 9/11 Truth?

Troy posted this in the comments, and while I have not had time to investigate it further, I thought it interesting enough to merit its own post.

On the Architects and Engineers bio page it lists a retired architect named Ted Elden from Charleston, West Virgina.

His company website has further information on his identity, complete with the same photograph, admittedly a crappy photo for someone who claims to be a photographer, and notes his interest in 9/11.

This isn't the most interesting part though. From the West Virginia Record, December 6th, 2007:

WHEELING -- An Ohio County jury ruled that a Charleston wedding photographer stalked and harassed a Parkersburg couple for a year and half after their wedding.

John and Kerri Vickers were awarded a $550,000 verdict in their case against Ted Elden and his company Elden Associates on Nov. 28 by an Ohio Circuit Court jury. John Vickers' mother and stepfather, Jim and Connie Murray of Wheeling, also were involved in the case.

Christopher Regan, an attorney with Bordas & Bordas in Wheeling, said Elden mailed cut-up photo negatives to the Vickers and the Murrays as well as other members of their families.

"The circumstances were like nothing you've ever seen before," Regan said. "The harassment would not stop. There were 18 to 20 mailings."Regan said Elden also scribbled out the faces on photos and mailed shattered photo CDs to the plaintiff's homes.

"Several mailings by Elden were times to coincide with holidays such as Valentine's Day and Mother's Day," Regan said. "One came just after the death of the bride's grandmother.

"The mailings continued despite repeated requests by the Vickers and the Murrays to Elden to stop sending vandalized pictures to their homes."

Geez, between the stalkers, cow killers, and people who assault women in wheel chairs, many more truthers are going to go to jail than the people they are claiming are behind the attacks.

Buzzflash Editor Buys Flight 93 Shoot Down

We've given credit to the major lefty blogs for (mostly) not engaging in the 9-11 kookery, but Buzzflash Editor Mark Karlin bites on the Flight 93 shootdown theory:

But the Tribune editorial reminded us that the likelihood that Flight 93 was shot down, given the first reports and the account of Cheney ordering it shot down, is quite high. Any U.S. government, whether Democratic or Republican, would probably not want to admit that it was responsible for blowing a commercial airliner with U.S. citizens aboard out of the sky.

So a heroic narrative was, it appears, crafted to cover up the reality of what happened. At the time, we speculated that Flight 93 may have been headed for the infamous Three-Mile Island nuclear plant, just a short air distance away from where it went down. Or it may have indeed been flying back with terrorist plans to crash the plane into Congress or the White House.

We'll never know.

But on a scale of 1 to 10, BuzzFlash would put it at an 8 likelihood that Flight 93 was indeed downed by an American missile.

As I have said in the past, this is probably really the most commonly held conspiracy theory on 9-11. But that doesn't make it any less stupid. Remember that the Lockerbie bombing shows us what happens to a plane when it is blown out of the sky; the wreckage of Flight 93 looks nothing like this:



But common or not, Buzzflash takes it into real kook territory with "So a heroic narrative was, it appears, crafted to cover up the reality of what happened." That's every bit as offensive as Korey Rowe's comments about "Let's Roll". Screw you, Buzzflash!

Mark Karlin gets the old Nutbar-O-Meter Treatment:

Richard Gage Goes With the Fatty Bin Laden Argument?

What's next, that Atta lived with a stripper and snorted coke? What kind of clueless morons does Gage have on his board that they chose to keep this ridiculous claim, debunked pretty well by their fellow truthers?

Hat Tip: Boloboffin at JREF.

Libertarians Fear Truther Cult Infiltration

The Troofer wing of the Libertarian Party is pushing a 9-11 Investigation Plank to their platform this year.

Don't kid yourself. This is not some minor side show that is going on with these Libertarians for Justice. This year already Dylan Avery, director of Loose Change, was the keynote luncheon speaker at the 2008 Libertarian State Chairs Conference. Loose Change, is the You Tube hit from 2005, a documentary claiming that 9/11 was an inside job. A documentary so full of mistakes and distortions that even members the 9/11 truth Movement like Michael Green have separated themselves from some of the theories in the documentary.

http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/green/loose_change.htm

Make no mistake, allowing the 9/11 Truth movement to take over the LP is not going to be good. It is not only bad history but it is bad politics. Like the albatross in Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, this will hang around the LP candidates neck and may even ultimately hang the entire libertarian movement with them.

Eric Dondero:

The Editorial Board at Libertarian Republican blog wishes to express our extreme disgust with those who claim to be "Libertarians" yet subscribe to such conspiratorialist views. These views are nothing less than reprehensible. And we wish to affirm that they in no way represent the views of the libertarian movement. We condemn them in the strongest terms possible, much as we would condemn Nazis, Murderous Communists, Racists like the KKK and other Hate Groups. It is a great shame that some Libertarian Party Presidential candidates have chosen to shame the movement by endorsing this Hate Group. -- Eric Dondero, Publisher

Good for Dondero, and the Libertarian candidates who have declined to sign onto the goofy pledge.

Alex Jones and Tommy Chong: Still Smoking

This is the interview that I mentioned last week. Tommy Chong has been doing massive amounts of drugs for the last 30 years, so he has an excuse for his brain not working correctly, but what is Jones' excuse.

Here are the most bizzare excerpts:

Chong: Just like the facts of the firemen, why the firemen were saving each other, you know when they found a dead fireman, that only firemen were allowed to rescue the body. You know, and there is a book out there about that. Why that is. I won't even say on the air, why only firemen were allowed, but I want people to read for themselves. So Google or whatever you can whatever firemen were at the World Trade Center.

And then these two geniuses discuss military strategy:

Jones: Bush signed the order to invade Afghanistan the day before 9/11 and had two aircraft carriers and 44,000 US troops massed around Tajikistan Uzbeakistan [sic] to invade Afghanistan. You don't set up an invasion in one day.

Chong: No. That takes 6 months at least, and even longer.

I am just wondering how they got those aircraft carriers to "Uzbeakistan"....

Hilariously, Jones later compares Chong to that great Soviet dissident, "Shelzenitsya". Geez guy, if you are going to make ridiculously comparisons with Nobel prize winning authors, at least learn how to pronounce their names.

And to think they put these videos up because they think it makes them look good.