In New York City, firefighters and first responders at the World Trade Center read the victims’ names for the first time today.

The majority of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudis, but Americans still try to draw some link to Iraq. Meanwhile, al Qaeda is in Iraq now.

This administration has made us less safe, less secure. We could have handled this so differently…

TO THE MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND OF THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

PLEASE TAKE NOTICE THAT,

On Behalf of the People of the United States of America, the Undersigned Scholars for 9/11 Truth Hereby Petitions for, and hereby demands, Release of the Following kinds of documents, video and films, and physical evidence to the public for study by experts and scholars investigating the events of 9/11:

1. Immediate release of the full Pentagon surveillance tapes, of which five frames (only) have been released via the official ASCE report, as Judicial Watch has also requested. We further demand release of the video tape seized by FBI agents minutes after the Pentagon hit, from the fuel service station near the Pentagon, as well as any other videotape which shows the 9/11 strike on the Pentagon.

See
news.nationalgeographic.com
www.defenselink.mil
www.defenselink.mil
perso.wanadoo.fr/jpdesm/pentagon

2. Immediate release of 6,899 photographs and 6,977 segments of video footage held by NIST, largely from private photographers, regarding the collapses of WTC buildings on 9/11/2001 (NIST, 2005, p. 81). In particular, all footage relating to the collapse of WTC 7 (including shots before, during and after the collapse) must be released immediately, without waiting for the NIST report on WTC 7, which is long overdue and may be prolonged indefinitely.

3. An explanation from Vice President Richard Cheney regarding the “orders” described by Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta in his testimony before The 9/11 Commission. Secretary Mineta stated that while in an underground bunker at the White House, he watched Vice President Cheney castigate a young officer for asking, as a plane drew closer and closer to the Pentagon, “Do the orders still stand?” The officer should be identified and allowed to testify at a deposition under oath.

See
www.911truthmovement.org/video/hamilton_win.wmv

4. The documents generated by Vice President Cheney’s energy task force have been kept from the public. A court case brought forth a few maps that display oil fields in the Middle East. We hereby put Congress on notice that there is probable cause with regard to criminal activities by the Cheney Energy Task Force involving a criminal conspiracy to launch illegal wars and/or terrorist activities. We therefore demand that Energy Task Force document that comprise, discuss, or refer to plans to invade the Middle East, including Iran, and Venezuela or other sovereign nations be released immediately.

See Cheney v. District Court 542 U.S. 367 (2004) and United States v. Nixon 418 U.S. 683 (1974).

www.worldnetdaily.com/news

5. Audio tapes of interviews with air traffic controllers on-duty on 9/11 were intentionally destroyed by crushing the cassette by hand, cutting the tape into little pieces, and then dropping the pieces in different trash cans around the building. We demand an explanation for this destruction of evidence and ask that the possible existence of other copies of such tapes or perhaps of written transcripts of the interviews be pursued. All air traffic controllers on-duty on 9/11 should be allowed to testify during a public forum under oath.

See
query.nytimes.com archive
web.archive.org suntimes cst-nws-tape07.html

6. The Secret Service, which is highly trained to protect the President from danger and to move him to a secure location in the event of a threat, breached its own standard procedures by allowing President Bush to remain at a public location for 25 minutes after it was known that the nation was under attack. All Secret Service personnel who were at Booker Elementary School with President Bush on 9/11 should be required to testify in public and under oath about these events.

See
abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=121331
www.whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/feral_press_9-10.gif
www.whatreallyhappened.com/bushbook.mov

7. On the morning of 9/11, some five “war games” or “terror drills” were being conducted by U.S. defense agencies, including one “live fly” exercise employing aircraft. These drills reportedly included the injection of false radar blips onto the screens of air traffic controllers. In addition, the government was running a simulation of a plane crashing into a building the morning of 9/11. Who was in charge of coordinating these war games and terror drills? Who had the ability to issues orders in relation to their conduct? On which screens were “false radar blips” inserted? When did such false injects commence? When were they purged from the controllers’ screens? What was the effect of these activities on standard procedures for interdicting hijacked aircraft?

See
www.911readingroom.org article_id=92
www.fromthewilderness.com Mckinney_transcript.shtml
www.spiegltech.com McKinney2.rm (6 minutes, 12 seconds into the video)
www.boston.com 0903_plane_exercise.htm

8. It has been reported that the FBI long ago found three of four “black boxes” from the two airplanes which hit the Twin Towers, yet has consistently denied that they were ever found. Their data would be of the greatest importance to understanding the events of 9/11. This matter must be investigated and the data they provide released to the public.

See
www.pnionline.com/dnblog/extra/archives/001139.html
www.counterpunch.org/lindorff12202005.html

For each of the four sites under investigation, the 9/11 Commission reported that two Boeing 757s, and two Boeing 767s (FAA, Part 121, airliners) owned by United Airlines and American Airlines were hijacked by novice pilots and were subsequently crashed, resulting in an unimaginable loss of life. Approximately 3,000 people died the morning of 9/11 as the direct result of these officially reported hijackings and subsequent crashes.

These four scheduled airliners were reported to have carried a total of 266 passengers and crew members, which, under FAA and NTSB regulations, demands a comprehensive investigation of the primary and contributing causes of each. In the case of suspected criminal foul play, the NTSB would normally assign the lead investigative role to the FBI, with assistance of investigators from the NTSB and FAA. A comprehensive investigation of each aircraft crash is not a regulatory option: they would have been mandatory. Therefore, we demand public release of each comprehensive crash investigation report, including access to all physical evidence that was required to have been collected and secured at a suitable facility. Such evidence should have included a large assortment of indestructible parts, including landing gears, surface actuators, engines, black boxes, and so on. The serialized parts would be invaluable in identifying each aircraft and, contrary to some reports, could not have “vaporized” upon impact.

Considering the enormous loss of life and financial collateral damage, if no crash investigations were conducted, who made the decision to disregard the FAA, Part 121, regulatory requirement? In the absence of the Part 121 investigation reports, the identity of the responsible authorities who made the decision not to investigate must be released, and they should be made immediately available for deposition under oath.

9. In the weeks before 9/11, the US Stock market showed rather high levels of activity on companies that would subsequently be affected by the attacks. The afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over trading patterns in stock options. A jump in United Air Lines some 90 times (not 90 percent) above normal between September 6 and September 10, for example, and 285 times higher than average the Thursday before the attack, have been reported. A jump in American Airlines put options 60 times (not 60 percent) above normal the day before the attacks has also been reported. No similar trading occurred on any other airlines appear to have occurred.

Between September 6-10, 2001, the Chicago Board Options Exchange saw suspicious trading on Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, two of the largest WTC tenants. An average of 3,053 put options in Merrill Lynch were bought between Sept. 6-10, compared to an average of 252 in the previous week. Morgan Stanley, another WTC tenant, saw 12,215 put options bought between Sept. 7-10, whereas the previous days had seen averages of 212 contracts a day. According to Dylan Ratigan of Bloomberg News: “This would be the most extraordinary coincidence in the history of mankind, if it was a coincidence. This could very well be insider trading at the worst, most horrific, most evil use you’ve ever seen in your entire life. It’s absolutely unprecedented.”

On September 18, 2001, the BBC reported: “American authorities are investigating unusually large numbers of shares in airlines, insurance companies and arms manufacturers that were sold off in the days and weeks before the attacks. They believe that the sales were by people who knew about the impending disaster”.

According to the London Independent, October 10, 2001: “To the embarrassment of investigators, it has also emerged that the firm used to buy many of the ‘put’ options – where a trader, in effect, bets on a share price fall – on United Airlines stock was headed until 1998 by ‘Buzzy’ Krongard, now executive director of the CIA.”

See
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1549909.stm
news.independent.co.uk/business/news/story.jsp?story=99402

The 9/11 Commission, after looking into the pre-9/11 stock trades, never denied their unusual nature. Instead, the Commission declared that al-Qaeda did not conduct the trades, and asked no further questions.

See amazon.com David Ray Griffin’s book The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions And Distortions

Who, if not al-Qaeda, performed the incriminating trades? This information exists, it can be easily obtained, and it needs to be made public. Moreover, illegal money transfers may have been processed through computers housed at the World Trade Center before the planes crashed into the Twin Towers on 9/11. We demand a disclosure of the source of the put options and that this whole sordid affair receive a complete and public investigation.

See
www.rediff.com/money/2001/dec/17wtc.htm
archives.cnn.com/2001/TECH/industry/12/20/wtc.harddrives.idg/

10. Eyewitness testimony and a substantiating photographic record suggest that a large sample of slag from the World Trade Center is being held at Hangar 17 of the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. Access to the slag sample should be made available to appropriate physicists in order to conduct non-destructive X-ray Fluorescence tests and other forms of examination, which should reveal evidence of the cause of the collapse of the Twin Towers. Based on these tests, we further demand two small samples (about the size of a fist) be extracted from this large piece for further scientific analysis.

See
911proof.com/resources/Slag+Sample.gif

11. Release of a complete inventory of the plane wreckage and debris from flights 11, 77, 93 or 175 or any other aircraft that crashed or was destroyed on September 11, 2001, including, but not limited to:

(a) the location (whether warehouses or otherwise) of all such items;

(b) a catalog of photographs and videotapes taken of any and all such items; and

(c) a list of all tests and examinations concerning any and all such items, including reports of such tests or examinations.

12. Release of a complete inventory of any steel, other metal or other material from the World Trade Centers, including, but not limited to:

(a) the location (whether warehouses or otherwise) of all such items;

(b) a catalog of photographs and videotapes taken of any and all such items; and

(c) a list of all tests and examinations concerning any and all such items, including reports of such tests or examinations.

On behalf of the People of the United States of America, we demand that the cover-up in this case end and that the kinds of documents, video and films, and physical evidence described above be provided to the public for experts and scholars to evaluate and assess in their efforts to expose falsehoods and reveal truths about events on 9/11.

FOR THE SOCIETY:

James H. Fetzer, Ph.D.
Founder and Co-Chair
Scholars for 9/11 Truth

Steven E. Jones, Ph.D.
Co-Chair
Scholars for 9/11 Truth

28 February 2006

Steve Bridges did a great imitation of Bush, and was obviously Bush’s own choice (for his own roast, he gets to choose?). I’ve heard that Bridges can do Clinton just as well. That was the light side of the dinner, although there were a couple of low-grade zings in that one, too.

But I have to say that I think Colbert’s performance was the more important. I did actually think much of it was funny, in the traditional way of a roast. As it went on, he transitioned through court jester, and went all the way to performative critique. The film clip of Colbert pretending to be the White House Spokesman forced the viewer to dwell in a fairly unpleasant space – it even made me a little anxious because of the genre of suspense, the music, the way it was drawn out. It was meant to make people squirm. It worked for that, but I could almost hear the pulse of a pounding vein in Bush’s own head by the end of it.

The video wasn’t funny – but it was performative, dramatic, and scathing in its depiction, and that was even better. Scott McClellan probably had the most right to feel attacked…. wasn’t that pretty much a depiction of him?

It focused on a single question, finally: Why did we really go to war in Iraq?

Helen Thomas herself – I swear I saw her wipe a tear. I was glad to see someone stand up for her, and for the questions she’s not been allowed to ask anymore despite her long history as the media hardnose to the President. And I was glad to see someone stand up for us, we who are being fed a bunch of hogwash propaganda day and night, straight from the White House to Fox News, etc.

Anyone who has watched the Daily Show or the Colbert Report would know what his humor was like. Remember, he was invited.

I fully expected Colbert to pull a Family von Trapp while the film clip was playing, but to my shock and admiration, he was still standing there at the end.

Thank you Stephen Colbert

The Speech Video

Stephen Colbert Musical Extravaganza

The Colbert Report

Colbert Clips on ifilm

Yes, I approve.

Why? Because I’m angry at his administration – Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et. al. – as well as its bullied, corrupt, or spineless members of Congress, the controlled or cowardly media, and the American people themselves – who have allowed our country to be twisted and trampled into something it should never be. If we continue on this path, our future is dismal.

William Rivers Pitt puts it pithily (when angry, spitting and sputtering are common) – Why the anger?

Because millions of people are staggered by the idea that, yes Virginia, we have to go through this again. We have to watch soldiers slaughter and be slaughtered for reasons that bear no markings of truth. We have to watch the reputation of this great nation be savaged. We have to watch as our leaders lie to us with their bare faces hanging out.

Why the anger? It can be summed up in one run-on sentence: We have lost two towers in New York, a part of the Pentagon, an important American city called New Orleans, our economic solvency, our global reputation, our moral authority, our children’s future, we have lost tens of thousands of American soldiers to death and grievous injury, we must endure the Abramoffs and the Cunninghams and the Libbys and the whores and the bribes and the utter corruption, we must contemplate the staggering depth of the hole we have been hurled down into, and we expect little to no help from the mainstream DC press, whose lazy go-along-to-get-along cocktail-circuit mentality allowed so much of this to happen because they failed comprehensively to do their job.

George W. Bush and his pals used September 11th against the American people, used perhaps the most horrific day in our collective history, deliberately and with intent, to foster a war of choice that has killed untold tens of thousands of human beings and basically bankrupted our country. They lied about the threat posed by Iraq. They destroyed the career of a CIA agent who was tasked to keep an eye on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and did so to exact petty political revenge against a critic. They tortured people, and spied on American civilians.

You cannot fathom anger arising from this?

There is at least a small amount of comfort in knowing that that the President had to hear, at least once, a few of the reasons why those approval figures are so low.

It’s a Wiki, so anyone can edit the site, but there are rules. You must post factual claims (no op-eds), with links to credible supporting material. No spouting off.

Take a look. It’s interesting reading.

Main Page – WikiThePresidency

It is the duty of every American to consider this information.

Phil Jayhan and Korey Rowe
1 hr 21 min 50 sec – Feb 5, 2005

The comic-book style explanation of Jesus/Michael, his resurrection, and his judgment at Armageddon (minutes 26-29 or so) is especially worth watching now. The destruction of New York in back of the Statue of Liberty resonsates very differently after 9/11. I actually had a lump in my throat from minute 33-36 – it brought so much back to me. Some parts may be a little dull to non-Witnesses, who might not grasp the importance of the questioning and contradictions – but it’s a good film overall. This film is clearly not terribly recent (1986, coincidentally the year of my college graduation), but it holds up on the information it presents. I even thought the very last minute or two was sweet and touching. Some former JWs will not appreciate the “grace and a personal relationship with Jesus” alternative just at that moment, others will. It would have made me very uncomfortable years ago, but not now.

I actually had the thought, “Well, maybe most of this administration’s ugliness is Cheney. Maybe Bush means some of what he is saying here.” I thought he really tried to appeal to our hopefulness at a very sour time – that showed some good leadership. But that’s about it.

So many platitudes, so little straight talk.

He opened with the death of Coretta Scott King. At least he kept his remarks short and honored her as best he could, considering everything.

Isolationist? I haven’t heard anyone advocating that America should be isolationist or retreating from the world. I guess everyone can get behind that – attack a position no-one holds. Actually, it seems that this administration might benefit from more open debates on how to engage with the rest of the world in more effective ways. The costs of our invasion of Iraq – all the costs (ethical, diplomatic, financial, etc.) – have yet to be justified. I sincerely hope that his view of Iraq is not as simplistic as his few comments suggest. Probably just dumbing down.

Ditto for terrorists, but this is even more troubling. He seems to view the terrorists as a singular force, when it is really a mutating, changing and global set of loose alliances. He hasn’t got at what it will take to defeat them if he is concentrating on nations.

Interesting that he went back and forth from inaccurate representations of Democratic views to words about bipartisanship and working together. He suggests that they are soft on terrorism? Please. In my darker moments, I wonder how far this administration would go to bolster those claims.

The Rule of Law – I can’t believe he’s trying to wrap his illegal surveillance of Americans in 9/11 again. The claims he is making on the NSA spying scandal are pretty much to be expected – and really it’s probably all he can do right now. Of course, everything he said is problematic from a variety of perspectives, but that’s all playing out elsewhere. Personally, I believe this president violated federal law, but feels secure enough about it to brag. Bad sign.

“Human-animal hybrids”? What? Is there some room from O Lucky Man hiding in North Carolina? Is there an island of Dr. Moreau off New York? Maybe they mean Plum Island?

Well, good to see the value of life expressed. I think about the lives of those people who died in the aftermath of Katrina, the lives of the people of Fallujah or in Gitmo or Abu Ghraib or in our huge domestic prison system which still carries out barbaric if sterile executions, or the lives of people around the world who get HIV for lack of real educational programs beyond “just abstain” and die from it for lack of support for generic drugs. It’s easy to see the values of “life” in cutting anti-poverty programs, in cutting education, in cutting healthcare. Or maybe the value of all our lives is measured in terms of profits and cannon fodder. I felt sorry for that military family standing there. I felt sorry for that soldier’s wife and his parents. What did he die for? Invasion and occupation wasn’t the only option. I’ve now heard rumours of dropping nukes on Iran. Evidently civilian killings are planned to represent our support of their liberty too.

I liked the “switch grass” – it added spice, although I’m not sure where the marshlands could be retrieved for growing it. Can you see the slogan? “Grow Grass for Bush.” Actually, I think the clean reliable and safe energy he’s planning on is primarily nuclear energy. Has that really registered? Do we really want to give terrorists even more underdefended targets here?

I’m not sure I can really believe that an administration so closely tied to oil and gas (and who always supports industry over consumers) will be the ones who will move us out of a petroleum-based economy. He said that the US would replace 75% of our Middle East oil imports by 2025, but only 20% of our imports come from the region anyway, and he gives it about 20 years to happen. The White House has been against efforts to tighten fuel economy standards, and the tax system actually gives SUV drivers an incentive. He pledged support for alternative fuel technologies in previous State of the Union addresses, too, just like every other President I ever remember. Let’s see how it pans out.

Line item veto? Maybe it was a joke? He did grin. Anyway, that power was granted to Clinton but then overturned by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional.

On the economy, let’s remember that he inherited a $281 billion budget surplus that is now a $400 billion deficit. The national debt is up 44% (trillions and trillions of dollars, folks), but he wants to keep those tax cuts to the rich. The gap in America between the rich and the poor grows.

We’ve created “more jobs than Japan and Europe combined”… and they are all at Halliburton. Seriously, I don’t know if the claim about job creation is true or not, but it is my understanding that in both Japan and most of Europe, there is healthcare whether or not you are employed, a free college education, weeks and weeks of vacation, and generous pension plans. Part-time jobs at Walmart don’t really compare. Let’s also compare the worker populations. I wonder how many new workers entered the market in that time? No mention of how many jobs India or China have created in the same amount of time…. Anyway, there was a reason he didn’t cite the figures from the beginning of his presidency – it would have cut his total by more than half. 2 million jobs over a five-year period isn’t really much to brag about, especially when you look at the jobs.

Healthcare. Again, Bush would rather cut Medicare than allow, for example, negotiated drug prices. A closed-door session just gave away another $22 billion benefit to insurance companies, and some $140 million was spent by drug and insurance companies to lobby Republicans on the Medicare drug benefit alone. How about looking at some of the systemic issues?

Yes, we need to have a debate on healthcare, one that bases decisions on the common good of all Americans – is he really going to have that debate? I hope so. We need everyone’s ideas on this one. He didn’t really make any move toward fixing the current mess that privatizing the drug benefit (or is it “penalty”?) has caused. There seems to be no move (while he’s in the mood to cut needed programs all over, like Pell Grants and Medicare), to optimize or reform the healthcare system or to watchdog the health/drug/insurance industries. Any administrative assistant at any healthcare facility in the country can tell you where the fat is, where the corruption is. How about this as one small measure – insurance companies have to pay bills within 30 days, like the rest of us. Don’t wait around to hear such measures suggested by the Bush administration.

The Patriot Act? How about if we lose some of these provisions, such as the criminalization of protesters (carrying punishments of up to ten years in prison)? Or perhaps the Congress should consider cutting back on the wholesale authority to wiretap your phone, monitor your e-mail and demand your medical, financial and student records from banks, vendors, doctors‚ offices, and libraries – those required to turn over your records are prevented from ever telling you, even if the records turn up no wrongdoing.

The Bush administration has worked hard – to subvert America’s laws regarding open government while it infringes on your constitutional rights. This administration has done everything in its power to block and stall and hide from investigations into 9/11, the way we entered into the Iraq war, the Katrina aftermath, and the outing of Plame. It is a very very secretive administration. It has promoted cronyism at such levels as to have become actual security threats to our nation, and blocked meaningful debate by simply shutting down the conversation.

Just the little detail that adds insult: Cindy Sheehan was arrested and taken away in handcuffs for the crime of wearing a teeshirt that said “2245 How Many More?”. She was an invited guest. She wasn’t the only one in trouble either. Beverly Young (wife of Rep. C.W. Bill Young of Florida, chairman of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee) was removed from the gallery for another teeshirt considered to be a “protest.” It read, “Support the Troops — Defending Our Freedom.”

So while I feel the President has, with practice, improved on his speech delivery skills, we’re still just being had.

Of course, I wasn’t that impressed with the Democrat’s response either, which had a few good points but was dumbed-down wayyyy too much.

I did like the brief comments I saw from Barack Obama. Maybe he should run in 2008. I’d vote for him over anyone else at this point.

So here’s his statement, which makes me a lot more hopeful than any words from this President’s speech:

Tonight, the American people know our union should be stronger. They know we can defeat terror and keep our shores safe. And they know that we can be competitive in a 21st century economy where every hardworking family prospers, not just some.

But the American people are wondering if this Administration can lead us there. Because after five years of the same timid solutions to great national challenges, Americans are more anxious about their future and more uncertain about the direction of the country we love.

They’ve seen their wages go down as their medical, gas, and tuition bills go up. They’ve seen jobs go overseas and wonder if our children will be prepared to compete in a global economy. And they’ve seen scandal and corruption take hold of a Washington that helps high-priced lobbyists at the expense of hardworking families.

Americans everywhere want a leader who speaks to their hopes for a better future and then acts on them.

But tonight, the President barely mentioned his health care plan for people who can already afford health care, ignoring bold, bipartisan proposals that can guarantee affordable and available health care for every American.

He identified America’s addiction to oil, but ignored his Administration’s addiction to oil-industry giveaways that won’t free us from our dependence on fossil fuels.

And after forty-six minutes of speaking, the President used less than sixty words to tell us how he’d clean up Washington and restore the American people’s faith in a government that works for them, not just big donors.

We can have this kind of government in America, face the future with hope, and move our country in the direction of progress. But we need strong leadership to get there – leadership that isn’t afraid to think big, try new ideas, and reach out to Americans of all political stripes. This is how we will restore the American people’s faith in our union and truly make it stronger.