You are sounding a little psychopathic. Maybe you need to think deeply about torture.
That would be an example of truther thinking. In order to deepen my understanding about something, I learn the facts rather than just thinking about it.
What is the factual basis of these comments?:
Of these [footnotes], many do not appear to be the sort of information that would be coerced through torture. Unless you can picture this scenario:
Detainee: All right, all right, I admit it! When bin Laden flew from Sudan to Afghanistan, he made a stop in Yemen! Please, just make it STOP!
Dare I say it, but it sounds like they are based on James Bond movies!
Your detatchment from the reality of torture sounds a little psychopathic.
Even the ebil Zelikow admitted that "quite a bit, if not most" of the 911 Commission's information on the 9/11 conspiracy "did come from the interrogations."
Fortunately, there is no need to appeal to authority, because we have the commission report itself, complete with over a hundred pages of citations.
Zelikow had almost total editorial control over what went into the 911 Commission report (including the citations) and the direction of its enquiries. He wrote the chapter headings of the Report before the Commission even began its work. Dismissing the importance and relevance of his opinion about how your preferred narrative was informed as “an appeal to authority” is sophistry, sometimes also known as “tap-dancing”.
If you’re genuinely interested in understanding how the 911 Commission Report narrative was fabricated I suggest you read “The Commission. The Uncensored History of the 911 Investigation” by Philip Shenon. The “uncensored” bit of the title is somewhat grandiose but it gives a good summary of the Commission’s severe limitations and complete lack of independence.
There have been many investigations done; some by government agencies, some by independent organizations, some by individuals. They range in focus from criminal to political to scientific. Every one of them comes to a conclusion that supports the simplest, most rational explanation...that Middle Eastern terrorists carried out the 9/11 attacks.
(I don't include investigations such as the ridiculous CIT project...these have no working hypotheses and thus cannot result in any reasonable conclusions)
As more and more of these investigations are carried out, the possibility that a radically different conclusion will fit the evidence becomes smaller and smaller, and the justification for a new investigation shrivels and dies.
Sorry.
The involvment of Middle Eastern terrorists in carrying out the attacks does not mean that other parties were’t involved. Your argument is circular and irrational.
There has not been a properly empowered, comprehensive, independent investigation into the attacks. Can you name one?
Just as you are continuing to miss the point of my last two posts. Maybe the third time will be the charm, though I don't have high hopes:
...if the Government and/or Big Business in the United Sates is as evil as you say, why wouldn't there be radical groups around the world justifiably angry enough to lash out at America in the form of what we'd call "terrorist" attacks? In other words, wouldn't a 9/11 type event be the sort of thing you'd expect to inevitably happen when downtrodden and angry people revolt against an oppressor?
Sorry to sound like a broken record...actually I'm not that sorry seeing as you haven't addressed it yet. Let me give you a more concrete example of what I've been trying to convey to you in this thread:
If a schoolyard bully goes around stealing other kid's lunch money for years, would it really be so surprising if a small group of kids got together, decided they had enough, snuck up behind the bully and broke his nose? If the bully showed up in class the next day with his face bandaged and the band of kids were bragging about what they did, would your first thought really be "I bet the bully did that to himself" or even more perversely "I bet he conspired with the band of kids to have that done to him so that he'd have an excuse to bully them even more". Would that really be your default opinion? Might that be because your own small band of kids are too frightened and indecisive about what to do about the bully, so all you do is whisper rude things behind his back and pass notes around when the teacher isn't looking that describe what you'd like to do to the bully? And since that's all your group has the audacity and ambition to do, you assume that no other group could be more audacious or ambitious?
But getting back to your point (because that's the mature, polite thing to do when responding to someone's sincere question), I work under the "questionable" assumption that Al Qaeda was soley responsible for the 9/11 attacks for two reasons:
1. Well, partly because of knowing about Occam's Razor, living 43 years on this planet and seeing how the real world operates tells me that more often than not, the simplest solution is the best. Life is not like a James Bond movie (alas). It is not like an Agatha Christie mystery. It is certainly not like, uh "Batman and Robin" (since you mentioned them). To use an example I mentioned elsewhere, when Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was attacked, my first thought wasn't "Aha! I bet she orchestrated that herself to get Tonya Harding out of the way!"
oh, I said I have two reasons for assuming that Al Qaeda was solely responsible for 9/11, didn't I? OK, here's the other one.
2. There's no evidence to suggest anyone else but Al Qaeda was involved in the 9/11 attacks. It's a small point, but an important one, I think.
I got your point the first time. Wasn’t that obvious from my response?
Yes, few people with any knowledge of the USA's bully-boy, foreign policy activities since WW2 found it implausible that someone would attempt to give it a taste of its own hyper-violent medicine. A fair number even applauded it. I myself didn't question the Bush regime 911 narrative for almost four years, even as the regime lied continuously and blatantly about almost every important issue. Big lies work best.
I have seen no evidence that al Qaeda acted alone. The possibility that it didn't has barely been touched on, let alone investigated, by any official body. Where it has been, in relation to the the Saudis, for example, virtually all the information has been blacked out.
When the 911 Commission found that suspicious, pre-attack financial movements originated from "our" side that was used as proof that there could be nothing suspicious about them. That illustrates the depth and mind-numbing power of the forgone conclusions.
P.S. ~ Do you really expect me to take your Nancy Kerrigan comparison seriously? ~
As far as I know, Nancy Kerrigan wasn't a global corporate/military empire, with a long history of covert political and military manipulation in many countries, her currency tied to oil, facing an epochal energy crisis and rising international competition for the world’s dwindling energy resources.
The commission report includes this insert that discusses the problem of reliability of detainee testimony:
Yes, they are retrospectively admitting that they have used unreliable, third-hand testimony to formulate their dodgy narrative, none of which would be admissible in a court of law. Why did they use it at all?
Also, keep in mind that you are equating "interrogation" with "torture". I'm willing to accept this for the sake of argument, but you do not in fact have any evidence that all this information was obtained through torture.
The US torture process began the moment detainees fell (or were sold) into US hands, in the way they were transported, for example, chained for hours to the bare metal floor of an aeroplane in diapers, goggles and gags. All information extracted from them is tainted by torture.
Torture is a process of breaking the human mind not the Ow-stop-it-that-hurts-I'll-tell-you-the-truth game that you appear to believe it is.
As well as being used to extract real information, torture has also long been used to extract false confessions to support the torturer's agenda and/or delusions, seeking to "prove" Iraq's non-existent part in 911, for example, or establishing that your annoying neighbor is a witch who made you lose your baby with bad magic.
