# 9/11 Challenge **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 22, 2009, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-challenge/503912 "2009-07-22T21:34:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![PrettyVacant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/49beb7/32.png) [@PrettyVacant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PrettyVacant)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-challenge/503912/61 "2009-09-16T11:01:08Z")
> [@adhay](#): > > There were many reasons for going into Afghanistan pre-9/11. Nah. Iraq of course, but Afghanistan never made any sense other than post-9/11. Especially after the Soviet experience. ---
**Author:** ![adhay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@adhay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhay)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-challenge/503912/62 "2009-09-16T12:14:31Z")
> [@PrettyVacant](#): > > Nah. Iraq of course, but Afghanistan never made any sense other than post-9/11. Especially after the Soviet experience. Which of course we were largely responsible for. There is also the poppy connection with our favorite drug dealer there and the fact that war is good for arms manufactures/dealers. Its win/win for everybody except the folks paying for it and those living thru it. ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-challenge/503912/63 "2009-09-16T13:15:06Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > There are videos? You’ve never seen the planes flying into the buildings? Are you serious? ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-challenge/503912/64 "2009-09-16T20:17:29Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Wouldn’t have been a whole lot simpler to put some, oh, I dunno, Iraqi citizens on the planes?! Seriously, the whole idea of a setup falls apart as soon as you look at it. See, then it would be TOO neat, and therefore all a setup. Duuuuuuuuuuuuuh. -Joe ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-challenge/503912/65 "2009-09-16T22:03:59Z")
> [@Contrapuntal](#): > > You’ve never seen the planes flying into the buildings? Are you serious? I’m pretty sure that the wooshing sound you are hearing is not the engines of nearby jets. ---
**Author:** ![adhay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@adhay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhay)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-challenge/503912/66 "2009-09-16T23:23:40Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally Posted by adhay View Post > It was not necessary for the these agencies to pool their info and then ignore it. All it took to ignore it was a willing executive. They didn’t cry “Foul” and accuse a popular wartime President of treason or at least stupidity? Much easier and a better career move to play stupid themselves. > [@tomndebb](#): > > However, we already know that this did not happen. We have the testimony of the FBI agent who was turned down when she asked that the reports on flight training be moved higher on the ladder. We have the reports from the guys who recovered the laptop in the Philipines that they or their boss did not find the plans credible and so never passed the information higher. All across the board we have the testimony of agents and lower level analysts that the information never made it higher than scattered departments–unless you want to assert that they are all in on the conspiracy. > > The incompetence of GWB or his immediate staff is a separate issue regarding the pursuit of information, but that does not make the matter one of conspiracy. The willing executive I was talking about is Bush. A lot of intel did get thru to Bush and to call his ignoring it “incompetence” ignores the fact that he had good reasons besides 9/11 to want to be in Afghanistan and had (from his pov) no reason to thwart an attack which would give him a public motive for invasion. IMO, he could have but did not. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2009, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-challenge/503912/67 "2009-09-17T01:00:17Z")
> [@adhay](#): > > The willing executive I was talking about is Bush. A lot of intel did get thru to Bush and to call his ignoring it “incompetence” ignores the fact that he had good reasons besides 9/11 to want to be in Afghanistan and had (from his pov) no reason to thwart an attack which would give him a public motive for invasion. IMO, he could have but did not. Actually, Bush did not want to be in Afghanistan. He wanted to be in Iraq even before the 2000 election, but he considered Afghanistan an unfortunate distraction. (That is why he was willing to sabotage the Afghanistan effort by pulling so many resources out of that country in the critical early stages after the defeat of the Taliban: recall his persistent opposition to “nation building” in Afghanistan in contrast to his embrace of the idea in Iraq.) If you want a conspiracy, you can look at the way that a dozen and a half marketing types were given a private office connected to DoD and the lofty (and inappropriate) titles of “intelligence analysts” with the specific purpose of cherry picking any actual intelligence, however weak or flawed, and playing it up to manufacture a reason to invade Iraq. However, the actual evidence regarding the WTC/Pentagon attacks is resolutely opposed any claim of sufficient information reaching Bush, to begin with. Regardless whether GWB was simply stupid or maliciously incompetent, there is a wealth of evidence that there was no conspiracy to permit the WTC/Pentagon attacks to occur, (or even knowledge among U.S. leadership that it was planned). ---
**Author:** ![adhay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@adhay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhay)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2009, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-challenge/503912/68 "2009-09-17T02:21:38Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > … > However, the actual evidence regarding the WTC/Pentagon attacks is resolutely opposed any claim of sufficient information reaching Bush, to begin with. Regardless whether GWB was simply stupid or maliciously incompetent, there is a wealth of evidence that there was no conspiracy to permit the WTC/Pentagon attacks to occur, (or even knowledge among U.S. leadership that it was planned). **tom** , I’m sure there is a wealth of evidence that most people weren’t involved. But what would evidence of **no** conspiracy look like? It’s not as if the Cheney White House were scrupulous record keepers. My thoughts on the whole subject of 9/11 were summed up way back when. (I should point out that the fact I speak of below is the fact of 20th century history of American intervention abroad on behalf of capital.) > [@adhay](#): > > I agree. The “How” of 9/11 is beyond sorting out and, short of Cheney confessing, it won’t be. Debating new evidence is a waste of time. > > That said, given the rank and predatory duplicity of American corporate foreign policy since the Spanish-American War, it’s not a big jump for me to think that they’re at it again. > > That ain’t theory, that’s public record fact. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2009, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-challenge/503912/69 "2009-09-17T02:28:55Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Oil pipelines and Afghanistan don’t make any sense. We did this is the previous round of 9/11 threads and it’s pretty clear that no one would go into Afghanistan to get oil via a pipeline. It didn’t make any sense before the war, it didn’t make sense when the USSR went in, it doesn’t make sense now. Foreign Policy magazine’s oil issue went into this somewhat. People think Afghanistan could potentially be a good pipe route for oil- or more likely natural gas- because of its proximity to both the Caspian Sea and the Indian Ocean. In reality though it isn’t going to happen. The action on pipelines from the Caspian are through the other side of it, through some '-Stans, Turkey, and all the way to Vienna. This project is in competition with a Russian project doing basically the same thing only farther north. There is a bit of a pipe war going on, but eventually one or both will be built. With an outlet for huge volumes of Caspian resources existent, an Afghan pipeline looks (even more) undesirable. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2009, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-challenge/503912/70 "2009-09-17T02:38:36Z")
“No conspiracy” looks just like the actual evidence we have today. Anything that places the White House at the center of a conspiracy, (either active or passive), is nothing more than fantasizingby folks who need there to have been a conspiracy. I am not claiming that Bush was incapable of conspiring to do evil–we have ample evidence that he did just that to get us into Iraq. I am noting that the pieces necessary for him to have been involved in a WTC/Pentagon attack conspiracy are contradicted by the information we know he never saw along with the the lack of motive, (since he wanted Iraq, not Afghanistan or al Qaida), and the utter lack of genuine evidence for that event while we have pretty nearly the entire conspiracy to get us into Iraq exposed. (Think Twelve Angry Men: he has to keep alternating between being brilliantly smart and moronically stupid for there to have been a good WTC/Pentagon conspiracy while the evidence regarding Iraq demonstrates neither brilliance nor idiocy, just medium level emotional manipulation with a few adequate political moves.) ---
**Author:** ![42fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/4/b487fb/32.png) [@42fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/42fish)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2009, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-challenge/503912/71 "2009-09-17T02:45:02Z")
> [@adhay](#): > > There were many reasons for going into Afghanistan pre-9/11, oil pipelines among them and 9/11 was our excuse. If this oil pipeline is so important that the government was willing to [choose one: (a) kill/(b)stand back and let someone else kill] 2,000+ Americans, why hasn’t the bloody thing been built yet? ---
**Author:** ![adhay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@adhay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhay)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2009, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-challenge/503912/72 "2009-09-17T03:45:09Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > “No conspiracy” looks just like the actual evidence we have today. Anything that places the White House at the center of a conspiracy, (either active or passive), is nothing more than fantasizingby folks who need there to have been a conspiracy. > > I am not claiming that Bush was incapable of conspiring to do evil–we have ample evidence that he did just that to get us into Iraq. I am noting that the pieces necessary for him to have been involved in a WTC/Pentagon attack conspiracy are contradicted by the information we know he never saw along with the the lack of motive, (since he wanted Iraq, not Afghanistan or al Qaida), and the utter lack of genuine evidence for that event while we have pretty nearly the entire conspiracy to get us into Iraq exposed. (Think Twelve Angry Men: he has to keep alternating between being brilliantly smart and moronically stupid for there to have been a good WTC/Pentagon conspiracy while the evidence regarding Iraq demonstrates neither brilliance nor idiocy, just medium level emotional manipulation with a few adequate political moves.) The difference between 9/11 and Iraq is that the first we knew of 9/11 was when the planes hit. Any evidence of conspiracy had to come after the fact and I agree that it is open to (seemingly endless) question. In Iraq we were treated to 6? months of public lying before we invaded. After the fact it was impossible to deny. In neither case, however, were the historic US rules of engagement abroad violated. I don’t think Bush was moronic but he _was_ a brilliant standup comedian. (of the clownish type) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-challenge/503912.md?page=3)