On May 15, 2002, CBS News reported that President Bush had been warned about possible al Qaeda hijackings on August 6, 2001. The Washington Post reported the story on May 16. “President Bush and his top advisers were informed by the CIA early last August that terrorists associated with Osama bin Laden had discussed the possibility of hijacking airplanes,” the paper reported. “White House spokesman Ari Fleischer confirmed that Bush had been told about the possibility of hijackings but he declined to say what had been revealed during his intelligence briefings.”

Heads up, masked man:

****On May 16, Rice held a press briefing; she insisted that no one could have envisioned the events of September 11. “I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people…would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile,” Rice said.****

(I personally have seen the clip at least 10 times and assure you that it is included in the video clip to which I referred you.)

Rice’s remark was surpassingly odd. No one could have predicted use of a hijacked plane as a missile? In fact, ever since September 11, news reports had mentioned earlier warnings about that very sort of activity. On May 18, 2002, the Post’s Bob Woodward and Dan Eggen challenged Rice’s statement. After quoting Rice’s remark, they outlined some previous warnings:

WOODWARD AND EGGEN: But a 1999 report prepared for the National Intelligence Council, an affiliate of the CIA, warned that terrorists associated with bin Laden might hijack an airplane and crash it into the Pentagon, White House or CIA headquarters. The report recounts well-known case studies of similar plots, including a 1995 plan by al Qaeda operatives to hijack and crash a dozen U.S. airliners in the South Pacific and pilot a light aircraft into Langley.

“Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida’s Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House,” the September 1999 report said.

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh080403.shtml

So how does Rice's comment support a conspiracy theory? It doesn't. It's just another unrelated piece from a pile of unrelated pieces.

Rice's comment clearly shows that she's in denial about her foreknowledge of what was going to happen. And if she knew what was going to be attempted, and cooperated with other members of the Bush administration in purposely doing and saying nothing to stop it or at least reduce its chances of being a success, she is complicit in the act itself -- just as you would be complicit in murder if a friend of yours told you about a plan he had to commit murder and you did not report it to the police or try in any way to stop him.

Well, you've just gone from absurd to insane.

No, I don't think so.  Just because it is, or was I should say,
unconscious, or semi-conscious, on her part, does not excuse.

But that was most interesting, "a pile of unrelated pieces."  Only
because we cannot see how the pieces relate.  In time we do see.  It
comes to all of us, to each of us.  In time.

Comparing this...

>And if she knew what was going to be attempted, and cooperated with other members of the Bush administration in purposely doing and saying nothing to stop it or at least reduce its chances of being a success, she is complicit in the act itself<

To this

> just as you would be complicit in murder if a friend of yours told you about a plan he had to commit murder and you did not report it to the police or try in any way to stop him.<

is going from absurd to insane.

What's the difference, in principle, between those two examples?

Nothing. They are both conditional and imaginary.

You're being evasive and you are in denial.  Either that or you know
next to nothing about the law of the land you live in.

The World Trade Towers were not the real estate plum we are led to believe. From an economic standpoint, the trade center -- subsidized since its inception by the NY Port Authority -- has never functional, nor was it intended to function, unprotected in the rough-and-tumble real estate marketplace. How could Silverstein Group have been ignorant of this?

The towers required some $200 million in renovations and improvements, most of which related to removal and replacement of building materials declared to be health hazards in the years since the towers were built. It was well-known by the city of New York that the WTC was an asbestos bombshell. For years, the Port Authority treated the building like an aging dinosaur, ***attempting on several occasions to get permits to demolish the building*** for liability reasons, but being turned down due the known asbestos problem. Further, it was well-known the only reason the building was still standing until 9/11 was because it was too costly to disassemble the twin towers floor by floor since the Port Authority was prohibited legally from demolishing the buildings.

The projected cost to disassemble the towers: $15 Billion. Just the scaffolding for the operation was estimated at $2.4 Billion!

In other words, the Twin Towers were condemned structures. How convenient that an unexpected "terrorist" attack demolished the buildings completely.

Could Silverstein have been in on the plot? Yes of course.

>You're being evasive and you are in denial. Either that or you know next to nothing about the law of the land you live in.<

You are projecting. And your conspriacy theory is just plain nuts.

Too bad you are unable to address my points in any rational, specific and honest way and are thereby left with no other option than to throw little pieces of mud at me personally.

Your points are part of a nut case conspiracy theory.

Richard--I'll look again. I note that you refer not to a statement by
Ms. Rice, but by someone claiming to be quoting her. That's not what I
asked for.

See, the reason why this is important, even though it seems like just
nit-picking by me, is that it's representative of so many aspects of
the "truthers" versions of 9/11 events. Direct, uncompromising proof
of what they say actually happened, or of what they assert so-and-so
actually said, is so often lacking. Instead, we so frequently find
just assumptions, followed by a reversal of the ordinary onus of
proof: "such and such _could_ have happened that way, and there's
circumstantial evidence that it did happen that way, so it _must_ have
happened that way, and if you don't buy that, just prove me wrong. You
can't can you? Ha."

All right--for the sake of argument, maybe Bush and Rice did have
some form of pre-warning that a terrorist attack might be looming. All
right--maybe they ignored those warnings. These are possibilities, and
the evidence you cite suggests that they may well be true. (The
implications of those warnings and their ignoring them are a further
debating point.) But so far there's no proof that afterwards, they
pretended astonishment at the use of jets. And Richard, that was a
major point you made: their pretended astonishment was "self-serving
crap." In which I agree with you--if they said it.

Again I admit, yes, it's a small point in the grand scheme of things.
But again I say that so far it's just another of many instances where
something that _might_ have happened is taken, by opponents of the
"official" version of events, to be absolutely true.

The proof you seek is in the video I linked you to. When you are alert and up to it, watch it from start to finish **without skipping** and without dozing off. The rest of the video is not going to be a waste of your time. Far from it. There is a great deal of compelling and very revealing testimony from a wide variety of people, many of them famous and with impressive reputations and credentials. People like 911 Commissioner, Bob Kerry for instance. The way he rakes Bush over the coals is something fierce and well worth watching more than once.

All righty then.

Very good. In addition to your acknowledgment of the Condi Rice comment, I'll be interested to get your reaction and thoughts on any and every other point. And if possible, be sure and keep notes on the temporal position, within the tape, of any point you'd like to discuss.

So how did the boogy men pull of Pennsylvania Richard?

My best guess is that the Penn crash was caused by an air-to-air missile fired from a (CIA?) fighter jet. And that's based on all the debris, allegedly from the plane, that was found miles from the crash site.

Where is the evidence?

Google this:  debris from Flight 93 found along its flight path

Oh please.   Every flight that goes down scatters debris.  If that is
the best you've got, time to give it up.

Every flight that goes down does not scatter debris over 7 miles of the flight path leading up to the crash site. Only planes with holes in their sides do that.

The Pennsylvania state police said debris from the crash has shown up about 8 miles away in a residential area where local media quoted some residents as seeing flaming debris from the sky.

But investigators were unwilling to say whether the presence of debris in two separate places evinced an explosion. http://www.eastandard.net/eahome/story15092001004.htm

Finding the flight data recorder had been the focus of investigators as they widened their search area today following the discoveries of more debris, including what appeared to be human remains, miles from the point of impact at a reclaimed coal mine.

Residents and workers at businesses outside Shanksville, Somerset County, reported discovering clothing, books, papers and what appeared to be human remains. Some residents said they collected bags-full of garden gift items to be turned over to investigators. Others reported what appeared to be crash debris floating in Indian Lake, nearly six miles from the immediate crash scene. http://post-gazette.com/headlines/20010913somersetp3.asp

"John Fleegle, an Indian Lake Marina employee, said FBI agents were skeptical of his reports about debris in the outdoor water fountains by the lake until they traveled to the lake shore Wednesday afternoon.

By Wednesday morning, crash debris began washing ashore at the marina. Fleegle said there was something that looked like a rib bone amid pieces of seats, small chunks of melted plastic and checks.

He said FBI agents who spent the afternoon patrolling the lake in rented boats eventually carted away a large garbage bag full of debris. "

Comment: If the debris was somewhat continuous, as you'd expect if the debris all originated at the main crash site, the FBI wouldn't have been skeptical, and wait over 24 hours until the next afternoon to check it out. It's only 2.5 miles away to the lake. But when they got there they rented boats and bagged up a bunch of debris.

http://www.flight93crash.com/flight93_secondary_debris_field.html

More from that last site:

Searchers found one of the large engines from the aircraft "at a considerable distance from the crash site, by a garden wall."

"It appears to be the whole engine," he added.

Szupinka said most of the remaining debris, scattered over a perimeter that stretches for several miles, are in pieces no bigger than a "briefcase." (archived at http://library.triblive.com - search whole engine from 9-10-01 to 9-20-01 or read it here)

Crowley related that 95 percent of the airplane had been recovered. The biggest piece of aircraft found was a fuselage skin measuring about 6 to 7 feet. The heaviest piece was from one of the engines and weighed 1,000 pounds. http://www.dailyamerican.com/disaster.html#final

Comment: It's important to recall that every description of the main crash site is that the airplane was OBLITERATED. Very small debris was spread over a couple hundred yards. This is exactly what you'd expect to see when an Airliner impacts nearly vertically as Flight 93 did. Nothing survived this impact... yet a 1000lb fan was found elsewhere. It fell off before impact, just like Flight 587's engine that was found basically intact did.

Ahhhh now I see.