VIDEO: Rumsfeld Confronted By Soldier Over Equipment Shortages In Iraq
VIDEO: Rumsfeld Confronted By Soldier Over Equipment Shortages In Iraq
Improvized Explosive Devices (IEDs) are responsible for “nearly half the casualties of our troops in Iraq.” Among the best defenses against IEDs is a massive heavily-armored vehicle called the Buffalo, which has “become the favorite of U.S. Army combat engineer teams.”
Yesterday, during a surprise trip to Iraq, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was confronted by a U.S. Army corporal who said the Buffalo he was using was “one of oldest pieces of equipment in the country,” and that just two weeks before, he’d seen a brand new Buffalo in New York City. Rumsfeld defended the Pentagon’s anti-IED efforts and deflected the specific question with a joke.
Full transcript below:
CORPORAL ARTHUR KING: Right now we have one of the oldest pieces of equipment in the country. It’s called a Buffalo and ours is the oldest. And the other day, two weeks ago, we saw a brand-new one in downtown New York City and we’ve been waiting for three months for ours. We are just wondering why that was.
RUMSFELD: Well, I don’t know about New York City. They obviously have a separate budget and they buy what they buy. We’ve got $3.6 billion that dwarfs anything that New York City does just for I.E.D. work and General Monty Miggs has been brought back and he is in the process — he has been in the Army for two and a half, three years, he has been working their heads off as the nature of the I.E.D. problem has migrated and evolved they have put enormous effort on it. I can’t answer why your particular unit ends up with one of the oldest pieces of equipment, but I’ll bet you General Casey can.
OLBERMANN: To his credit, General Casey skipped the jokes said he didn’t know either but would find out and get back to him with an answer.
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rumsfeld is a freaking joke!!
July 13th, 2006 at 5:26 pmRight. The poor guy is out there risking his life, and Rummy decides to make a joke out of the proceeding.
I am just wondering: how can anyone still believe that this Administration gives a damn about any of the troops? This kind of callous, calculated display, with frivolity covering up the disdain for the men in uniform, should make it clear to anyone considering enlisting: you are fighting this war for his profits.
And isn’t it time that someone told him “Enough!”?
July 13th, 2006 at 5:33 pm“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,” a White House aide famously told…
July 13th, 2006 at 5:35 pmUm, I guess I missed the joke.
He passed off an operations related question to Gen Casey, not because he was making light of the situation or looking down upon the soldier.
False outrage is the play of the week.
July 13th, 2006 at 5:44 pmChase,
Let’s send you to replace that soldier, with his shoddy equipment, and then see how much false outrage you will muster. Jerk.
July 13th, 2006 at 5:49 pmIraqis Call for Timetable, America Cracks Down
by Aaron Glantz
“We asked them to put a timetable on their withdrawal, and they think that they should stay. This is the main reason of the conflict,†explained Sadr movement spokesman Fadil el-Sharra, adding it was Sadr’s representatives in Parliament who had put forward the resolution demanding a timeline on a U.S. troop withdrawal.
July 13th, 2006 at 5:50 pmCan he retire to Baghdad now? Please?!
July 13th, 2006 at 5:51 pmThe man is a disgrace – a senile old fart who thinks his jokes are funny, no matter at whose expense.
In the family, people like him are treated politely and then excused because of their age and failing mental faculties, and no one trusts them with anything of potential danger — this guy wields too much power – he, himself, is dangerous – his decisions are not thought out rationally – our troops are suffering from his poor management – and his humor is embarrassing. If he won’t go quietly into the night, then he must be forced to go. His incompetence and failures should have been recognized and dealt with long ago.
Rumsfeld defenders should volunteer to take the place of a young soldier in Iraq who is presently under the command of Rummy. Let’s see how readily they will excuse him then.
July 13th, 2006 at 5:54 pmRumsfeld is a dispicable and dishonorable man. He needs to be removed………this country has become dysfunctional in it’s ability to recognize bad leaders and then acting.
July 13th, 2006 at 5:54 pm#5 – I think the soldier should have the best equipment we have – that’s not the point.
The point is Sec Rumsfeld didn’t know the answer, and he deferred it to Gen Casey. I don’t see the joke.
The feigned outrage is not from the soldier – it’s from the TP crown on this and the Bradbury story.
July 13th, 2006 at 5:55 pmIt’s funny.
“Progressive” radio personalities are clearly nervous when they discuss Israel.
The Democratic party and “Progressive” radio personalities are clearly trying to make an impossible distinction between bloggers, and people who listen to their shows.
Funny funny funny.
Ed Schultz is REALLY turning up the “I’m a good ole boy” schtick.
Standin’ on shaky ground…
As for Casey? He must be getting bags of cash to be their stooge. Bush squeezes out turds on Casey pretty stinky, too.
July 13th, 2006 at 5:57 pmMarie- May we assume yopu served our country as a WAC during WWII and you are now too “mature” to serve? Of course our service members deserve the BEST equipment money can buy – but no thanks to the progs who are outraged at the cost of war. Undoubtedly, you join me in appreciation for the fact that we don’t have Hezbollah and Hamas crossing our borders and shooting rockets.
July 13th, 2006 at 6:02 pmMighty, your’e not the least bit outraged at the cost of the war and the alarming amount of insufficient equipment that our military is still having to deal with? Year 4 of the 9 month in and out and they’ll love us campaign and a soldier who puts his life on the line every day asks the senior most ranking offical why he still has to risk his life on old equipment and Rummy jokes about it. That is offensive. Of course Rummy doesn’t know but don’t make light of it.
July 13th, 2006 at 6:06 pmI’ve never seen anyone called out, so many time.
If he wasn’t pulling the strings, Bushco wouldn’t keep him in his post.
July 13th, 2006 at 6:07 pmChase,
I kind of understand where you are going. This is how I see it, and I think how many others see it:
If Rumsfeld did not have an answer for the soldier, then the correct response should have been:
“I’m sorry Mr. Brave Soldier, I understand what you are saying and I commend your courage for asking me directly. I can tell you right now that something about your situation is obviously wrong, but I regret to say that I can not currently answer your specific question. Please allow me to defer to Gen. Casey, of whom is more qualified than myself. Thank you for your service.”
and NOT:
“I can’t answer why your particular unit ends up with one of the oldest pieces of equipment, but I’ll bet you General Casey can.”
WHICH HE THEN FOLLOWED UP WITH LAUGHTER.
July 13th, 2006 at 6:07 pm#13 – You really think he made a joke of the fact the soldier didn’t have the newest and best? Is that what you got from the exchange?
July 13th, 2006 at 6:08 pm“We’re shuffling off old Buffaloes there, so the tax cuts make it easier for the wealthy to buy new Buffaloes here.”
July 13th, 2006 at 6:09 pm#15 – Yeah, fair enough. Could he have been more stiff-backed? Yeah.
I just don’t think he was making a joke of the situation. And looking back at the video, he just kinda has a grin on his face, the rest of the place (soldiers, mind you, who didn’t seem outraged themselves) breaks out into laughter.
July 13th, 2006 at 6:12 pm#16 No, I don’t think he did because of the equipment in and of itself. I think he did because of his controlling nature and it was something he didn’t have control of so he side stepped. He should have responded much closer to the suggestion in #15. The joke is for the media and yes men. That soldiers is now on patrol with outdated equipment but we talk about the joke Dumsfeld may or may not have meant.
July 13th, 2006 at 6:13 pmChase: “And looking back at the video, he just kinda has a grin on his face, the rest of the place (soldiers, mind you, who didn’t seem outraged themselves) breaks out into laughter.” – - Yeah, that nervous, gallows, fait accompli type of laughter.
July 13th, 2006 at 6:14 pm#20 – It was such a poorly timed and mean-spirited joke, why was an audience of active duty soliders guffawing at it?
The more I think about this, the more beneign it becomes – just like the Bradbury comment.
July 13th, 2006 at 6:18 pmRumsfeld is a prime example of bad decisions of the decider.
July 13th, 2006 at 6:23 pmin other news:
think progress still refuses to recognize the death of red buttons, dennis hastert’s hospitilization, and…what was the other thing…. oh yeah:
“israel is killing people with usa-supplied bombs whose sale was approved by votes from democrats and republicans in the house and senate†***
***this version approved by some guy on another thread who said i was being ‘partisan’
July 13th, 2006 at 6:23 pm#21 “It was such a poorly timed and mean-spirited joke, why was an audience of active duty soliders guffawing at it?
Because soldiers are many times handed a shit sandwich and because of there training say “pass the salt”. They fully understand the situation they are in.
July 13th, 2006 at 6:23 pmThis is right up there with Dubya searching for WMD in his office while Condi stood there giggling.
They have no sense of what’s appropriate and what isn’t.
July 13th, 2006 at 6:24 pm#24 – So they just don’t know any better. You don’t think, had they been really offended, they would have not laughed?
July 13th, 2006 at 6:25 pm#26 This is trivial and pointless. He cracked a poorly timed and poorly thought out joke. That’s all. Have you ever been in the military and had a senior ranking member address you? If you had you would understand that even a joke about the pending battle will raise a laugh from the crowd.
July 13th, 2006 at 6:30 pmThe feigned outrage is not from the soldier – it’s from the TP crown on this and the Bradbury story.
Comment by Chase — July 13, 2006 @ 5:55 pm
If you’re gonna build strawmen, could you build better ones?
The outrage from us is for the lack of competent body armor, and Dummy’s usual ignorance about what’s going on under his supervision. He should know these things Chase. Don’t cover for him. Unless you wanna go replace that soldier for a tour of duty and get back to us on whether or not Dummy’s answer was sufficient for you.
July 13th, 2006 at 6:31 pmIt just seemed to me that that soldier showed so much raw humanity in his plea for help and that Rumsfeld was nothing but callus, unsympathetic, and unmoved. That bothers me…
July 13th, 2006 at 6:32 pmQuestions/observations:
1. Cpl. King said he saw the Buffalo in NYC. Does that necessarily mean that NYC owns it? Or was it there as part of a military display (and thus owned by the military)?
2. If indeed the new Buffalo is owned by NYC, Rummy unknowingly points out a pathetic fact: NYC can better afford one than the military with it’s “dwarfing” budget. Or…despite the money we are throwing at this effort, we STILL can’t — no, won’t — protect our soldiers at all costs.
July 13th, 2006 at 6:32 pmI agree with Matthew. The soldier wanted assistance and all he got was the usual dodge drafting sociopathic callousness from a man who was choking back a scolding of the plebe for criticizing him. I wanna see Dummy stationed in Iraq for the rest of the Bush Regime’s time in office. And not in the “Green Zone” either.
July 13th, 2006 at 6:36 pmThe outrage over a lack of armor is fine. I know I am.
I also don’t defend Sec Rumsfeld. I think the first step to progress in Iraq is his retirement. He botched the initial invasion and stabilization effort by not committing more troops, as requested.
Fair enough. I’m done with this subject. Let the echo chamber commence.
July 13th, 2006 at 6:36 pmIt’s fine, Chase? Glad you approve… Sheesh.
July 13th, 2006 at 6:37 pm#29 remember, this is the man who said ” you go to war with the army you have, not the one you want”. I’m not sure if the soldier was pleading for help or had the balls enough to say the architect of this mess that he’s risking his life daily in an outdated piece o’ shit and would like to know what can be done about it.
that took quite a bit to do and I’m sure he’s the toast of his platoon for doing it.
July 13th, 2006 at 6:38 pmSince Bush and Cheney have proclaimed, on more than one occasion in the past, that the citizens of this country must be prepared to sacrifice during a time of war, the question that begs to be answered is, why is Donald Rumsfeld’s son not in the Army so he can show the country that it is not just the lower and middle classes who are sacrificing, by fighting in Iraq along side the rest of the grunts? Should only the unwashed masses sacrifice and not the children of the elite? I think not.
July 13th, 2006 at 6:40 pm#17 You go to war with the buffalo you have not the buffalo you want.
July 13th, 2006 at 6:58 pmThat soldier should’ve calmly made his way to the podium as if to get a closer look at his Defense Secretary and then he should’ve belted Rummy right there!
Donald Rumsfeld is a complete and utter disgrace. But, then again, look who hired him.
July 13th, 2006 at 7:09 pm#34′ Cpl King will be busted to pvt King and have his tour extended as his reward for questioning his higher-ranking officialdom. Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
July 13th, 2006 at 7:09 pmDear JAO – “Mighty, your’e not the least bit outraged at the cost of the war and the alarming amount of insufficient equipment that our military is still having to deal with?”….No, I am not the LEAST bit outraged at the cost of the war. I read on the lib blogs how upset progs are about the money that could be going to help the “under-privledged” is being spent fighting Islamofascism a half a world away. If you’d pull out your handy-dandy pocket Constitution you’ll find national defense enumerated. Where are the wealth transfers that ALL dedicated progs value in our great compact? Let me explain that we have spent trillions of dollars on poverty since 1965 and I don’t think there has been a signiicant improvement in the statistics. (Civil Service, Military Service, etc. are avenues to the Middle Class in which poor, but motivated people could avail themselves.) We’ve poured zillions of dollars into a public education rat hole and our scores have been declining for decades. Like all good progs, I’m certain your intentions are lovely – but when it comes to “heavy lifting” throwing more money at the problem will assuage the guilt.
July 13th, 2006 at 7:14 pmIt seemed like an inside joke to me, as I didn’t find it funny.
Rumsfeld didn’t have the answer, but rather than assure the soldier he would find out the answer, he passed it off to someone who also didn’t have the answer. At least General Casey said he would look into it.
And YES! I object to the cost of this war. Both in terms of money AND in terms of lives and suffering. It is a senseless waste of both in pursuit of an illusory goal.
But then, the real goal of this war is to keep us in fear, and keep us controlled. And it is working with all those who still support this Administration.
July 13th, 2006 at 7:17 pmDear Progs – for you Morons who insist that Rumsfeld is a draft dodger – you MIGHT want to check your FACTS.- I love to call you LiARs but “IGNORAMUS” is more accurate…
July 13th, 2006 at 7:17 pmComment by Ho Chi Minh — July 13, 2006 @ 7:09 pm
Hey, quit putting down military music! A lot of quality compositions qualify as “military music.” (At least your heart is in the right place, Ho)
July 13th, 2006 at 7:20 pm41, again blathering without links, MA?
July 13th, 2006 at 7:20 pm#40 Briseadh na Faire: Thank you. At least I know one other person gets it.
July 13th, 2006 at 7:28 pmM.A., Your boyfriend, Rumsfeld, is a chickenshit chickenhawk just like the Chimperor and that idiot who thought Foghorn Leghorn was a chicken, not a rooster. He chickened out of military service and you know it.
July 13th, 2006 at 7:32 pm#43 – I’ll provide links re: Sec Rumsfeld’s military service:
(via wikipedia)
July 13th, 2006 at 7:35 pm#48 – Why are you incapable of just admitting you were mistaken about a simple fact?
Are you prepared to say peace-time service is less imporant, less honorable?
July 13th, 2006 at 7:39 pmAnyone here ever notice that most all of the posts of the dead wrong righties begins with, contains many more and ends with insults. They keep thinking that if they insult us constantly that we will capitulate and just join them in their delusion that this administration has the interests of the American people at the top of their priorities. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Most of the people here simply want our representatives and public servants to represent us first as they are supposed to and not last as they are. Truth and accountability are the prime building blocks for integrity and respect.
July 13th, 2006 at 7:48 pm#42 BNF, I guess it’s just that I had too much of it, marching to that music in boot camp that I can’t stand it(military music that is). Besides, I’m more into Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, and Country Joe & the Fish, etc.
July 13th, 2006 at 7:48 pm#50 – I didn’t think you had called him a draft dodger. You did attempt to minimize his service (@ 48). That’s what I ask if you think there is less honor in peace-time service?
Anyway, in the comment where I provide a description of his Naval service, I was answering a question from our Irish friend.
July 13th, 2006 at 7:49 pmOoops, forgot to include Ravi Shankar.
July 13th, 2006 at 7:49 pmJeez Chase, I am less offended by the “joke” than that Rumsfeld deferred the question to a freaking general. Do you think it is the general’s call as to what defenses the troops have against the one thing that is killing the majority of them? Does it not bother you at all that Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, dodged responsibility for this very…simple…question?
July 13th, 2006 at 7:49 pm#55 – Gen Casey is the person who answers questions about how supplies and personnel are distributed. Sec Rumsfeld typically is confined to policy questions.
I understand how you want to nail this to Rumsfeld, but the fact is he did the appropriate thing in forwarding the question to the correct party.
July 13th, 2006 at 7:55 pm#43,44,45 – “41, again blathering without links, MA?
Comment by Briseadh na Faire — July 13, 2006 @ 7:20 pm
#40 Briseadh na Faire: Thank you. At least I know one other person gets it.
Comment by Mr. Evil — July 13, 2006 @ 7:28 pm
M.A., Your boyfriend, Rumsfeld, is a chickenshit chickenhawk just like the Chimperor and that idiot who thought Foghorn Leghorn was a chicken, not a rooster. He chickened out of military service and you know it.
Comment by JIMBO
******Dear Ouugah Bugggah, Mr. Evil Sympathizer, and JimBOOB – It’s good to finally see the common thread that links progs – LAZINESS. But in an effort to demonstrate your abject stupidity, try this site:
http://www.defenselink.mil.bios/rumsfeld/html
You’re welcome…..
July 13th, 2006 at 7:56 pm#57 Mighty Aphrodite: Just more insults. Thanks for proving my point.
July 13th, 2006 at 8:12 pmChase, supplying troops with the proper tools to do the job is unfortunately, under Bush, a policy issue.
July 13th, 2006 at 8:19 pmMr. Evil – I didn’t think you smart enough to be insulted – but you are DEFINITELY too LAZY to Google….
July 13th, 2006 at 8:25 pmHey Mr. Evil (AKA Dr. Evil)
How’s it going. No insults here from one of my favorite libs.
July 13th, 2006 at 8:27 pmDear Evil Idiot – In your lexicon are “chickenhawk, chickenshit and Chimoperor” compliments – you truly are a DOLT – not to be confused with a young male horse.
July 13th, 2006 at 8:28 pm#59 – Agreed. But once they are supplied, the specific distribution is up to Gen Casey.
The question was best answered by him, and that’s why Sec Rumsfeld passed it along.
I catch your drift though: the troops are under-supplied. I totally agree.
But with regard to the Q&A session, I don’t think Sec Rumsfeld was being evasive, nor was he making a joke of not having the must up-to-date armored vehicle. And that was the tenor of the original post.
July 13th, 2006 at 8:29 pmChase,
One question.
Did you watch the video? Or just read the transcript? You won’t get the full effect just reading the transcript.
July 13th, 2006 at 8:32 pmRumsfeld’s military service is comparable to Bush’s in that neither one came close to being on a field of combat while wearing a military uniform. They and others, like Cheney and Rove, will urge their fellow citizens to be patriotic and serve their country by fighting in Iraq while none in this administration can highlight their courage under under fire, since all of them have mysteriously managed to avoid serving their country under any kind of combat conditions. Multiple examples of do as I say, not as I do. This hallowed tradition has now been passed down to their offspring, where the last thing that one will see is any of them, like their fathers, fighting for their country while dodging bullets and roadside bombs. Hypocrites.
July 13th, 2006 at 8:36 pmOur troops are the “most supplied” by any military in the history of the Earth. Do they need more, sure.
July 13th, 2006 at 8:36 pm#64 – I actually watched it a few times. I had to look closely at who else was in the audience (active duty soldiers in uniform) and whether Sec Rumsfeld himself laughed (as was stated somewhere earlier).
But anyway, yeah, I watched it.
July 13th, 2006 at 8:38 pm#65 –
No, no, no. Sec Rumsfeld actually did a good deal of flight training. I don’t understand why there is this need to diminish his service. Just accept it already!
As for sending their kids off to war: joining the military is a voluntary decision right now. Their kids have the choice to join or not – the politics of their parents should play no role. Have you thought that maybe their kids don’t agree with the war? That’s a possibility. I don’t know, neither do any of you.
I don’t see the necessity of dragging their kids into something that’s not their fight. If there was a draft, and they were illegally dodging it, that’s another story altogether. That’s not the case.
July 13th, 2006 at 8:42 pmBut anyway, yeah, I watched it.
Comment by Chase
Then I don’t understand how you don’t see that Rummy was making a joke at that gentle giant’s expense. I wasn’t watching Rummy so much as I was watching the soldier – before Rummy started his answer.
I could see the soldier was almost shaking in his boots. He was so nervous his voice was shaking – almost disappearing entirely. I could see it was SO difficult for him to stand up and ask that question of the Secretary of Defense, and Rummy just kicked him to the ground. This guy’s life is at risk every single day, and Rummy makes jokes and flys away in his air conditioned jet.
July 13th, 2006 at 8:51 pmComment by mighty aphrodite — July 13, 2006 @ 7:56 pm
Now, let me see, hmmm, MA posts an assertion of fact without posting a link to substantiate its claim, then accuses others of being lazy. MA must know about evidence, after all, it is a lawyer. Does it expect opposing counsel to go out and find evidence to support the claims it brings in court for its clients?
Or is it merely projecting onto others its faults?
July 13th, 2006 at 8:56 pmChase, link to chickenhawks-New Hampshire Gazette. It’s literally a who’s who in the GOP congress, White House, and their media supporters. Members of the draft-dodging GOP hall of shame include; Bush(deserter), Cheney(5-deferment Dickhead), Ashcroft(7 deferments), Frist, Hastert, Rush Limpdick(who incidentally claimed a deferment for an ailment I personally changed the bandages on GIs with the same “ailment” when I was a corpsman in the service), Kristol, Feith, Wolfowitz, Oreilly, Hannity, Perle, and Abrams among others. So these draft-dodging cowards SHOULD be drafted AND their kids and the whole lot of them shipped off to the front lines.
July 13th, 2006 at 8:58 pm#60 Mighty Bitchy: Just what the hell was I supposed to Google? WTF idiot?
July 13th, 2006 at 8:59 pm52 – Ho Chi Minh, I can understand. Mine was the first year that was not drafted for Vietnam, so I missed the boot camp experience.
But I have taught music for nearly 2 decades, so I appreciate all kinds of music.
July 13th, 2006 at 9:00 pm#70 – I’m sure the soldier was scared; I know I would be in that situation.
I further agree that Sec Rumsfeld’s window for making progress has now closed and he should step down.
I don’t see, though, that Sec Rumsfeld was making a joke at his expense. I think a joke, obviously at his expense, wouldn’t have elicited the kind of response it did from a military crowd.
I think they saw it as harmless. I think outsiders should too.
July 13th, 2006 at 9:03 pm#72 – Alright man.
July 13th, 2006 at 9:05 pm#62 Mighty Dipshit: What the hell are you referring to? You must be drunk and stupid because you’ve confused me with some other post that makes you look like a stark raving mad moron. If you are going to insult someone, make sure you get the right person. Or are you just living proof that the best part of you ran down your mother’s leg? People like you are just a waste of good oxygen.
July 13th, 2006 at 9:07 pm#63 This is not a distribution problem. They don’t have the equipment they need.
July 13th, 2006 at 9:12 pm#71 Briseadh na Faire: All she cares about are insults. That’s all she gives, so that’s all she should get. She just wants to have sex with Ann (PC) Coulter.
July 13th, 2006 at 9:13 pm#74 BNF; I WAS drafted. AS for some of your taste in music……different strokes for different folks. Sorry about that.
July 13th, 2006 at 9:15 pmSupporting the troops…
Or “What Republicans aren’t interested in doing”:CORPORAL ARTHUR KING: Right now we have one of the oldest pieces of equipment in the country. Its called a Buffalo and ours is the oldest. And the other day, two weeks ago, we…
July 13th, 2006 at 9:26 pmTo quote the mysterious Dave Rabbit from his pirate radio broadcast in Vietnam; “Lifers are like flies, both eat shit and bother people”.
July 13th, 2006 at 9:31 pmMr. Evil
Do not allow the not so Mighty Aphrodite to get to you. When she and the rest of her ilk, such as Ann Coulter, engage in ad hominem attacks, it reminds me of the dialogue in the classic film Twelve Angry Men. The eldest juror serving on a jury is attempting to speak rationally to another juror, played by Jack Warden, who is quite set in his beliefs. Jack Warden’s character will have none of it, walks away from the elderly juror, leaving him quite frustrated at the attitude of this close minded juror. Henry Fonda consoles the elder juror by telling him: “He can’t hear you. He never will.”
July 13th, 2006 at 9:33 pmI thought Mighty Hag was a guy — no offense to all of you wonderful men commenting here. I’ve just always thought of it as male.
July 13th, 2006 at 9:38 pm#75 – Ok Chase, we just see it differently.
July 13th, 2006 at 9:40 pm#83 Errol: You are quite right. And 12 Angry Men is an excellent movie.
July 13th, 2006 at 9:52 pmPost 84 Zooey > MA is a male drag queen who masquerades as a female on here > lol.
July 13th, 2006 at 9:57 pmRumsfeld is just flat out despicable. Everyone in this country should be outraged at the way this Administration has treated the Military.
July 13th, 2006 at 10:01 pm#87 – I’ve met a few drag queens, and none of them are as mean and rotten as Mighty Hag. Ugh.
July 13th, 2006 at 10:03 pmAnyone who has been in the military will know that
July 13th, 2006 at 10:09 pmthe soldier who asked the question will be given the
worst assignment possible. His fellow soldiers will
think he is a hero but officers don’t. Why do you
never hear the truth from generals and other officers
in Iraq? Truth=death to you/your career.
Watch it again, Chase. “But I’ll betcha Gen. Casey can.” Pay attention to that statement and look at Dum, er, Rumsfeld’s expression and the tone of his voice. He made a funny!
Beyond that, Rumsfeld doesn’t give a shit what kind of shape the military is, equipment-wise. After the previous episode during which he was asked about armor, he should have been receiving daily breifings on the situation. He shouldn’t be satisfied until there is no question that the military has everything it needs. THAT would impress most people here.
July 13th, 2006 at 10:15 pmLaugh it up… Prick!!!
July 13th, 2006 at 10:21 pmYay, WC!
July 13th, 2006 at 10:21 pmCAPTION CONTEST:
July 13th, 2006 at 10:23 pmTake that old Buffalo gear and shove it up your…right there, chubby boy!
Hey Zooey, do you thing Mighty Assabitey has reached pus crack status?
July 13th, 2006 at 10:33 pmI think the joke is Rumsfeld and other White House staffers having to sneak in and out of the “improving” situation of death and chaos they created in Iraq.
July 13th, 2006 at 10:34 pmSorry, I meant “think”.
July 13th, 2006 at 10:35 pmIt should be obvious to everyone, except the kool-aid drinkers and paid trolls, that even without changing the budget (a topic I don’t wish to go into right now) for Iraq, considerably more money could have and should have been spent to purchase better equipment for the US troops if there had been more oversight on Halliburton’s gross overbilling.
July 13th, 2006 at 10:36 pmRumsfeld and the rest of the insanity boys of the PNAC could care less about the troops and their equipment. All they care about is shifting money to the ‘contractors’ and getting that colossus of a embassy built and the finishing the permanent military bases. We’re in Iraq for the long haul.
Being there had nothing to do with terrorism or Saddam or Pee Wee Herman for that matter. It is simply the PNAC agenda being fulfilled. And it will bankrupt us.
July 13th, 2006 at 10:39 pmIts really great to see the south africans, lebanese, europe, and god knows who else trying to trash the secdef. The question was passed to the person who should know the answer, Its like asking you what underwear you wore last thursday, oh I forgot, you dont wear it. Uparmoring apparently isn’t something you understand, its just something to get pissed at.
July 13th, 2006 at 10:41 pm#99 Lora: Or how about Custer Battles blatant fraud. “The contract said to deliver trucks, it didn’t say they had to work.”
July 13th, 2006 at 10:43 pmMr. Evil,
God, you’re funny! Trying to get into the Secret Society of the Moderated? ;)
To answer your question – that pus has dried over weeks ago, and is causing a mighty rash up its back. Smells good, too.
July 13th, 2006 at 10:43 pmSS&M, let’s destroy Mighty Assabitey and the other trolls and get moderated.
July 13th, 2006 at 10:47 pmBut in an effort to demonstrate your abject stupidity, try this site:
http://www.defenselink.mil.bios/rumsfeld/html
You’re welcome…..
Comment by mighty aphrodite — July 13, 2006 @ 7:56 pm
Thanks for nothing.
I see that, even after all this time, you still haven’t learned how to post a link that works.
Here is the actual (working) link: http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/rumsfeld_bio.html
Or maybe it is a task too complex for you to handle?
July 13th, 2006 at 10:51 pm#99 Thanks, Mr. Evil. I had forgotten about Custer Battles. I’m sure there are other cases of gross overcharging, but it’s been very hot where I am today, and my brain isn’t 100% in operation right now.
July 13th, 2006 at 10:54 pmSS&M, let’s destroy Mighty Assabitey and the other trolls and get moderated.
Comment by Mr. Evil
Will do… ;)
July 13th, 2006 at 11:02 pm#106 Lora: Hotter than hell here too today.
July 13th, 2006 at 11:05 pm#80 – no problem, we’re both on the same side here.
Peace.
July 13th, 2006 at 11:16 pmOdd that Rumsfeld was in Iraq just as Israel declared war on Lebanon? The Neocons planned this whole deal > have Israel start the war on Syria and Iran, then the 25,000 new Marines just shipped to Iraq get sent to battle Iran! This whole episode has a bad smell!
July 13th, 2006 at 11:32 pm#110 – Wha, wha, what?
Where did you pull that from? Your ass, I presume.
July 13th, 2006 at 11:38 pmLOL Chase > Rumsfeld was in Iraq yesterday just as Israel geared up to attack Lebanon! I suppose you think it was a coincidence huh? Bush has been planning an attack on Iran for months, so Israel just gets to set the whole thing off! Gets Dubya off the hook for starting it!
July 13th, 2006 at 11:54 pmMaybe they were supposed to delay the killfest until Rummy had already left for home from his photo-op comedy tour.
July 13th, 2006 at 11:56 pm#10-Chase-”Rumsfeld didn’t know the answer.” Why the HELL not? He IS the Sec. Def., after all. It is his JOB to know the answer. Our soldiers STILL do not have the body armor they need, and now they are forbidden to wear the armor sent to them from home, but they aren’t given anything to replace it. There is no excuse for it. And they do not care, either.
July 14th, 2006 at 12:07 am#55-”You did attempt to minimize his service.” Err… Max Cleland, John Kerry, Jack Murtha, ring any bells? I hope so. BushCo went out of their way to minimize their service, and still does.
damn right Cyra Brown–why didn’t Rumsfeld know, why didn’t he want to find out who is failign to get our troops the absolute best. not a whiff of outrage or even upset. sure as hell looked like he didn’t give a damn. not the first time, as I said
no excuse. responsibility isn’t just for welfare recipients
July 14th, 2006 at 12:13 amthe idea that this is an operations v. a policy question is laughable-Rumsfeld can only care iof you can categorize a failure to give our soldiers the best as a policy question? take this one on the comedy circuit–it doesn’t come close to passing the straight face test
I don’t care if this was within Rumsfeld’s official bailiwick or not. I would think our Secy of Defense would care when he is presented with a question like this and would show some determination to fix the problem
July 14th, 2006 at 12:17 amSpeaking of killfests, why don’t we just have one big deathmatch on this planet. Let’s just get it over with. We love death. Most of our hit movies are about killing. Most of our hit TV shows, death: after death, before death, watching death as it happens. The who, what and why of death. Murder rules on this planet. Everyone go out and buy guns tomorrow and load ‘em up and let’s play! Planet Earth Killfest! Coming Soon!
This has to be the absolute, stupidest planet with technologically advanced beings in the history of the universe. Politicians get to tell scientists that they don’t know what they are talking about. Most everyone’s God is an invisible man floating in the sky that wants everyone to be good and obey his rules but, no one does because killing is lucrative, politically advantageous, religiously captivating (remember, God is always on your side, so everyone is technically righteous in going to kill because some religious nutjob whacko said so) and it’s fun kids! You can keep score on the evening news.
If I were from another planet and had just discovered Earth and it’s life, after one quick look I’d turn around and haul ass back to the planet I came from never to return. Everybody in power lies and there are no ramifications. Stealing our money and practically giving it away to their business interests while they run up hundreds of thousands of dollars in hotel, golf, restaurant and whore bills waiting for their kickbacks. We live each day waiting to see who’s going to kill who. Is it any wonder why the pharmaceutical companies are constantly hawking the latest wonder cure-all drugs on TV? We need to be stoned, drunk and wasted just to stomach all this! And guess what? How much do you want to bet that the Planet Earth Killfest will continue tomorrow?
All ranting aside, how about we try something different for a change, like actually living. We are capable of much better because we don’t have computerized cars, space exploration, micro-surgery, worldwide communications (use us here as just one example), etc., etc., etc. We just have to demand more and better. More honesty, more integrity, more dignity and more humanity. And I think that time is now.
July 14th, 2006 at 12:29 ammore on our troops not getting the best. Rumsfeld, Bush–all of them have known this for years and have never been outraged about this. I remember in 2000 VP candidate Cheney told soldiers “help is on the way”. what a sick joke
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2003-12-17-turley_x.htm
July 14th, 2006 at 12:35 amhttp://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/31/60minutes/main652491.shtml
http://fallenbrothers.com/community/showthread.php?t=5117
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1203-12.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40321-2004Oct17.html
http://www.business-journal.com/archives/20050413StricklandIraqLetter.asp
correction: last paragraph of my rant; …etc., etc., etc., because we are totally stupid.
July 14th, 2006 at 12:35 amAnd with Israel, Lebanon, the Palistinians and most likely Syria and Iran soon to be major players in the middle-east killfest we will be paying much more for gas in the coming days. Kinda makes you just want to go out and buy a big SUV right about now doesn’t it? Guess what happens when the oil flow slows. We get immediately gouged. Prices will skyrocket. Lines will form. People will stew and brew until it happens… The Great American Gasoline Killfest! Exxon and Chevron and Shell and BP will reap hundreds of billions of dollars. CEO’s will escape about every 6 months with $100,000,000 retirement packages including protection, 4 Mexicans (2 male, 2 female), at least one prostitute per week for life, a signed photo of George Bush (signed, I did it all for you, “CEO name here”), a foreclosed on city of their choice including it’s very own green zone and a new fleet of Hummer limos each with it’s own pool, spa and petting zoo and last, but not least, a lifetime of free entertainment of the rest of us killing each other for a gallon of gas. It’s a beautiful world.
July 14th, 2006 at 12:55 amPost 120 > I lived in California when we had that contrived gas shortage during the Carter presidency > we waited in lines for hours to get a rationed 10 gallons of gas for every car! At one station in Los Angeles a guy got up to the pump, after waiting in line for hours, and the gas station owner told him they just ran out of gas, so he took out a gun and shot the owner to death, then burned his station to the ground! If gas goes to $5.00 a gallon, with rationing, then be prepared for the fights, and some people shooting others over gasoline!
July 14th, 2006 at 1:07 amI was there. I heard the question and answer first hand. I failed to see the joke.
The laughter (I laughed too) was at Rumsfeld putting Gen. Casey on the spot to answer a tough question. We all love to see 4-stars get put on the spot.
Joke about the equipment? No. (And mind you, I have no lost love for Rummy. I just fail to see what the outrage is about.)
As far as the buffalo… age is not an accurate measure of worth. It probably *looks* old because it has survived so many IED blasts. That vehicle is the most hardened piece of equipment out here, and I can’t believe someone is complaining about having to ride in it. No soldier has been killed yet in a buffalo… we’ve lost plenty of other vehicles. I’d gladly give up a ride in a brand new humvee to ride in the oldest buffalo in the country.
The buffalo in NYC has probably not survived dozens of IED blasts, so it still looks new and shiny.
July 14th, 2006 at 2:56 am#89; if you think that MA is mean, you should see my ex-wife. To call my ex a cold-blooded viper would be unfair to vipers. She was even screaming at hubby #2 while he was literally on his deathbed. Great bedside manner, while hubby is dying, she is hounding him every inch into his grave.
July 14th, 2006 at 4:05 amwhat happened to the ‘i will do everything to make sure our soldiers have what they need to fight this war’. wasn’t that a statement by busyboy and rumnut? it may not be word for word but awful damn close. with the multi billion dollars going into iraq this shit should not be happening. but give thanks to halliburton, carlyle, brown kellogg and the f. cronies who are cashing in. and what happened to the oil revenues paying for this war. and what happened to the memory bank of the f. bush lovers in here. just conveniently forget when your ass is against the wall. all lyou bushlovers ain’t got shit to say unless your over there in your ground digger, bdu’ kevlar and coughing up red f. dust looking for the ‘bad guy’ when he sits right on pen. ave.
July 14th, 2006 at 4:47 amthis f. prick is f. nazi. someone needs to burn his ass up.
July 14th, 2006 at 4:49 amthe same way we did with the iraqis, wmd called white phospherous.
July 14th, 2006 at 4:50 amsorry s.o.b.
July 14th, 2006 at 4:50 amPROJECT FOR A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY:
“(Iraq), SYRIA, LEBANON, YEMEN, IRAN, SUDAN, SOMALIA*
* (and Kissinger wants to partition Saudi Arabia)
Step #1. Invade Iraq, establish U.S. heavy airbases, and an impregnable Citadel.
Step #2. Israel launches invasion of Lebanon, continuing attrocities until Syria and Iran and possibly Jordan are drawn into the war.
Step #3. U.S. bombs Syria, Lebanon, YEMEN, and Iran — World War III is on. GFH Bush has the option to use nukes.
Step #4. To the victors go the spoils. Iraq is partitioned, Palestinian land is depopulated, the maps are open for redrawing, and the genocide of Arabs (and Persians) that the Bush/CIA and Mossad have conspired to create, is a smoking nightmare.
July 14th, 2006 at 5:19 amHey, Ho Chi Minh,
July 14th, 2006 at 9:35 amCorpsman, eh? I was, too.
Loved the bands you mentioned.
I remember going to Winterland to see Joplin
& the Dead while in uniform. Expected to get a lot
of shit from non-military people. Instead, the parted
the line & asked me to go in front!
I changed me mind about a lot of things that day, including
what the hell I had enlisted for, but seeing Janis & Jerry that
night was something I’ve never forgot.
Trying to stay on topic, Rumsfeld reminds me of Gen. Wastemoreland, eh?
Thanks for serving as a Corspman…Semper Fi!
Are you prepared to say peace-time service is less imporant, less honorable?
Comment by Chase — July 13, 2006 @ 7:39 pm
Damn right I am. Less important doesn’t mean “not” important or “not” honorable.
2 days ago a kid in his 20s returned to our hometown from Iraq after months of rehabilitation. See, his group was attacked and he wasn’t expected to live. He received massive head wounds and they thought his spinal cord was severed from the shrapnel. The kid still can’t use part of the left side of his body, and his speech is somewhat slurred. He is having to wear what looks like a special, padded helmet on his head for a few more months, after which time he will receive fiberglass implants to replace parts of his skull.
I think it’s great that Dumsfeld served his time in the military. And it’s nobody’s fault that he wasn’t given the opportunity to serve in battle. But guess what, Chase? You are full of sh*t to even consider suggesting that Donald Dumsfeld deserves as much praise for his service in the military as this young kid, who is wounded for life, does.
July 14th, 2006 at 9:52 am123 Dan– “just fail to see what the outrage is about”
the outrage is about the fact that for years our troops have not been getting the equipment they need. I provided several links to stories on this subject over the past 3 years. Rumsfeld knows this–it’s not news to him. But when a soldier raises the subject, rather than expressing outrage over the fact that our guys don’t get what they need, or saying this will be looked into, he acts likes he’s chatting with someone like a cocktail party and passes the buck to someone else
the press conference clip is symbolic. The real issue is that our troops have been getting shafted and no one in the leadership has fixed the problem, or seems to care
July 14th, 2006 at 9:55 am#123 – Ho Chi Minh
Yikes. Glad you got away from that one…
#133 – Well said, WC.
July 14th, 2006 at 9:59 amYou know what else, Chase? Perhaps if our government who is spending hundreds of billions of dollars on this war (much of which is being wasted WITHOUT any oversight by Congress) would equip our troops with helmets that better protected their heads, and we didn’t have to rely on Cher and other regular citizens to finance the purchase of these helmets, then maybe the poor kid in my previous post wouldn’t be in the shape he is now in.
July 14th, 2006 at 9:59 amWC
You are absolutely right. I am always amazed that more people are not outraged by the hypocrisy of this administration concerning the topic of patriotism. Conservatives are quite fond of exhorting the citizens of this country to display their patriotism by sacrificing for their country by signing up for the military and fighting in Iraq but yet when it came time for them to step up they were nowhere to be found. I am also always amazed whenever Bush gives a speech at one of the military academies that the soldiers or cadets or airmen do not get up and walk out en masse when he starts to speak. Have they already forgotten that Bush somehow managed to leap over as many as 50 to 100 people who were ahead of him to get into the National Guard, because he knew that the chances of going to Vietnam as part of the National Guard back then were about 1 per cent? One wonders if the person whose slot was taken by Bush ended up serving in Vietnam and arrived back in this country in a pine box. Perhaps this shows with enough flag waving and with the passage of time, people’s brains seem to to shut down while they attempt to rationalize that their “great man” can do no wrong.
July 14th, 2006 at 10:19 am#124
what happened to the ‘i will do everything to make sure our soldiers have what they need to fight this war’.
Comment by bs — July 14, 2006 @ 4:47 am
Like these gems?
George Bush, debate in St. Louis, October 17, 2000:
George Bush, Speech to Republican National Convention Aug 3, 2000:
George Bush, Press Release, “Improving Troop Morale†May 31, 2000:
George Bush, Presidential debate, Boston MA, Octobter 3, 2000:
And just for fun:
George Bush, St. Louis Debate, Oct. 17, 2000:
(The preceding brought to you by http://www.issues2000.org/George_W__Bush_Defense.htm)
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Great post Plunger…..I remember, how many others do.?……….Blessings
July 14th, 2006 at 11:27 amErroll,
Same here, my friend. I think more folks would be outraged if they were engaged in the topics of the day. But they aren’t interested. As I and many others here have said before, I think it’s the idea that if it doesn’t affect them directly, why worry about it. Most of the one’s who do bother to engage in debate (or pretend to) just have a different viewpoint…and that’s fine. But common sense and reasoning generally are not part of that debate.
July 14th, 2006 at 11:46 amThe Lies Are Out There
BY JIM MEIGS
Photographs by Alyson Aliano (James Meigs) and Lori Grinker/Contact Press Images (flag raising)
Published in the March, 2005 issue.
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion,” the great Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York was fond of saying. “He is not entitled to his own facts.”
It has been 3-1/2 years since the September 11 attacks. In that time, the American people have questioned why we were caught off guard and have demanded to know the whole story behind the events of that terrible day. But as a society we accept the basic premise that a group of Islamist terrorists hijacked four airplanes and turned them into weapons against us.
Sadly, the noble search for truth is now being hijacked by a growing army of conspiracy theorists. A few of these skeptics make a responsible effort to sift through the mountain of information, but most ignore all but a few stray details they think support their theories. In fact, many conspiracy advocates demonstrate a maddening double standard. They distrust every bit of the mainstream account of 9/11, yet happily embrace the flimsiest evidence to promote their wildest notions: that Osama bin Laden attacked the United States with help from the CIA; that the hijacked planes weren’t commercial jets, but military aircraft, cruise missiles or remote-control drones; that the World Trade Center buildings were professionally demolished.
These 9/11 conspiracy theories, long popular abroad, are gradually–though more quietly–seeping into mainstream America. Allegations of U.S. complicity in the attacks have become standard fare on talk radio and among activists on both the extreme left and the extreme right of the political spectrum.
ASSAULT ON THE TRUTH: Three and a half years after 9/11, conspiracy theorists are trying to rewrite history.
Don’t get me wrong: Healthy skepticism is a good thing. Nobody should take everything they hear–from the government, the media or anybody else–at face value. But in a culture shaped by Oliver Stone movies and “X-Files” episodes, it is apparently getting harder for simple, hard facts to hold their own against elaborate, shadowy theorizing.
Fortunately, facts can be checked. For our special report, PM compiled a list of the 16 most common claims made by conspiracy theorists, assertions that are at the root of virtually every 9/11 alternative scenario. These claims all involve fields that are part of PM’s core expertise–structural engineering, aviation, military technology and science.
We assembled a team of reporters and researchers, including professional fact checkers and the editors of PM, and methodically analyzed all 16 conspiracy claims. We interviewed scores of engineers, aviation experts, military officials, eyewitnesses and members of the investigative teams who have held the wreckage of the attacks in their own hands. We pored over photography, maps, blueprints, aviation logs and transcripts. In every single instance, we found that the facts used by conspiracy theorists to support their fantasies were mistaken, misunderstood or deliberately falsified.
Reasonable people are entitled to wish that our government had been better prepared and more alert. But those who peddle fantasies that this country encouraged, permitted or actually carried out the attacks are libeling the truth–and disgracing the memories of the thousands who died that day.
Links referenced within this article
special report
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html
Find this article at:
July 14th, 2006 at 12:18 pmhttp://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1230517.html
9/11: Debunking The Myths
PM examines the evidence and consults the experts to refute the most persistent conspiracy theories of September 11.
Published in the March, 2005 issue.
FALSE WITNESS: Conspiracy theorists claim this photo “proves” the 9/11 attacks were a U.S. military operation. PHOTOGRAPH BY ROB HOWARD
For background on this investigative feature, please click here.
FROM THE MOMENT the first airplane crashed into the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001, the world has asked one simple and compelling question: How could it happen?
Three and a half years later, not everyone is convinced we know the truth. Go to Google.com, type in the search phrase “World Trade Center conspiracy” and you’ll get links to an estimated 628,000 Web sites. More than 3000 books on 9/11 have been published; many of them reject the official consensus that hijackers associated with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda flew passenger planes into U.S. landmarks.
Healthy skepticism, it seems, has curdled into paranoia. Wild conspiracy tales are peddled daily on the Internet, talk radio and in other media. Blurry photos, quotes taken out of context and sketchy eyewitness accounts have inspired a slew of elaborate theories: The Pentagon was struck by a missile; the World Trade Center was razed by demolition-style bombs; Flight 93 was shot down by a mysterious white jet. As outlandish as these claims may sound, they are increasingly accepted abroad and among extremists here in the United States.
To investigate 16 of the most prevalent claims made by conspiracy theorists, POPULAR MECHANICS assembled a team of nine researchers and reporters who, together with PM editors, consulted more than 70 professionals in fields that form the core content of this magazine, including aviation, engineering and the military.
In the end, we were able to debunk each of these assertions with hard evidence and a healthy dose of common sense. We learned that a few theories are based on something as innocent as a reporting error on that chaotic day. Others are the byproducts of cynical imaginations that aim to inject suspicion and animosity into public debate. Only by confronting such poisonous claims with irrefutable facts can we understand what really happened on a day that is forever seared into world history.–THE EDITORS
THE PLANES
The widely accepted account that hijackers commandeered and crashed the four 9/11 planes is supported by reams of evidence, from cockpit recordings to forensics to the fact that crews and passengers never returned home. Nonetheless, conspiracy theorists seize on a handful of “facts” to argue a very different scenario: The jets that struck New York and Washington, D.C., weren’t commercial planes, they say, but something else, perhaps refueling tankers or guided missiles. And the lack of military intervention? Theorists claim it proves the U.S. government instigated the assault or allowed it to occur in order to advance oil interests or a war agenda.
Where’s The Pod?
CLAIM:Photographs and video footage shot just before United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center (WTC) show an object underneath the fuselage at the base of the right wing. The film “911 In Plane Site” and the Web site LetsRoll911.org claim that no such object is found on a stock Boeing 767. They speculate that this “military pod” is a missile, a bomb or a piece of equipment on an air-refueling tanker. LetsRoll911.org points to this as evidence that the attacks were an “inside job” sanctioned by “President George Bush, who planned and engineered 9/11.”
FACT: One of the clearest, most widely seen pictures of the doomed jet’s undercarriage was taken by photographer Rob Howard and published in New York magazine and elsewhere (opening page). PM sent a digital scan of the original photo to Ronald Greeley, director of the Space Photography Laboratory at Arizona State University. Greeley is an expert at analyzing images to determine the shape and features of geological formations based on shadow and light effects. After studying the high-resolution image and comparing it to photos of a Boeing 767-200ER’s undercarriage, Greeley dismissed the notion that the Howard photo reveals a “pod.” In fact, the photo reveals only the Boeing’s right fairing, a pronounced bulge that contains the landing gear. He concludes that sunlight glinting off the fairing gave it an exaggerated look. “Such a glint causes a blossoming (enlargement) on film,” he writes in an e-mail to PM, “which tends to be amplified in digital versions of images–the pixels are saturated and tend to ’spill over’ to adjacent pixels.” When asked about pods attached to civilian aircraft, Fred E. Culick, professor of aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology, gave a blunter response: “That’s bull. They’re really stretching.”
No Stand-Down Order
CLAIM: No fighter jets were scrambled from any of the 28 Air Force bases within close range of the four hijacked flights. “On 11 September Andrews had two squadrons of fighter jets with the job of protecting the skies over Washington D.C.,” says the Web site emperors-clothes.com. “They failed to do their job.” “There is only one explanation for this,” writes Mark R. Elsis of StandDown.net. “Our Air Force was ordered to Stand Down on 9/11.”
FACT: On 9/11 there were only 14 fighter jets on alert in the contiguous 48 states. No computer network or alarm automatically alerted the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) of missing planes. “They [civilian Air Traffic Control, or ATC] had to pick up the phone and literally dial us,” says Maj. Douglas Martin, public affairs officer for NORAD. Boston Center, one of 22 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regional ATC facilities, called NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) three times: at 8:37 am EST to inform NEADS that Flight 11 was hijacked; at 9:21 am to inform the agency, mistakenly, that Flight 11 was headed for Washington (the plane had hit the North Tower 35 minutes earlier); and at 9:41 am to (erroneously) identify Delta Air Lines Flight 1989 from Boston as a possible hijacking. The New York ATC called NEADS at 9:03 am to report that United Flight 175 had been hijacked–the same time the plane slammed into the South Tower. Within minutes of that first call from Boston Center, NEADS scrambled two F-15s from Otis Air Force Base in Falmouth, Mass., and three F-16s from Langley Air National Guard Base in Hampton, Va. None of the fighters got anywhere near the pirated planes.
Why couldn’t ATC find the hijacked flights? When the hijackers turned off the planes’ transponders, which broadcast identifying signals, ATC had to search 4500 identical radar blips crisscrossing some of the country’s busiest air corridors. And NORAD’s sophisticated radar? It ringed the continent, looking outward for threats, not inward. “It was like a doughnut,” Martin says. “There was no coverage in the middle.” Pre-9/11, flights originating in the States were not seen as threats and NORAD wasn’t prepared to track them.
Flight 175’s Windows
CLAIM:On Sept. 11, FOX News broadcast a live phone interview with FOX employee Marc Birnbach. 911inplanesite.com states that “Bernback” saw the plane “crash into the South Tower.” “It definitely did not look like a commercial plane,” Birnbach said on air. “I didn’t see any windows on the sides.”
Coupled with photographs and videos of Flight 175 that lack the resolution to show windows, Birnbach’s statement has fueled one of the most widely referenced 9/11 conspiracy theories–specifically, that the South Tower was struck by a military cargo plane or a fuel tanker.
FACT: Birnbach, who was a freelance videographer with FOX News at the time, tells PM that he was more than 2 miles southeast of the WTC, in Brooklyn, when he briefly saw a plane fly over. He says that, in fact, he did not see the plane strike the South Tower; he says he only heard the explosion.
While heading a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) probe into the collapse of the towers, W. Gene Corley studied the airplane wreckage. A licensed structural engineer with Construction Technology Laboratories, a consulting firm based in Skokie, Ill., Corley and his team photographed aircraft debris on the roof of WTC 5, including a chunk of fuselage that clearly had passenger windows. “It’s … from the United Airlines plane that hit Tower 2,” Corley states flatly. In reviewing crash footage taken by an ABC news crew, Corley was able to track the trajectory of the fragments he studied–including a section of the landing gear and part of an engine–as they tore through the South Tower, exited from the building’s north side and fell from the sky.
PLAIN VIEW: Passenger windows on a piece of Flight 175’s fuselage. PHOTOGRPAH BY WILLIAM F. BAKER/FEMA
Intercepts Not Routine
CLAIM:”It has been standard operating procedures for decades to immediately intercept off-course planes that do not respond to communications from air traffic controllers,” says the Web site oilempire.us. “When the Air Force ’scrambles’ a fighter plane to intercept, they usually reach the plane in question in minutes.”
FACT: In the decade before 9/11, NORAD intercepted only one civilian plane over North America: golfer Payne Stewart’s Learjet, in October 1999. With passengers and crew unconscious from cabin decompression, the plane lost radio contact but remained in transponder contact until it crashed. Even so, it took an F-16 1 hour and 22 minutes to reach the stricken jet. Rules in effect back then, and on 9/11, prohibited supersonic flight on intercepts. Prior to 9/11, all other NORAD interceptions were limited to offshore Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ). “Until 9/11 there was no domestic ADIZ,” FAA spokesman Bill Schumann tells PM. After 9/11, NORAD and the FAA increased cooperation, setting up hotlines between ATCs and NORAD command centers, according to officials from both agencies. NORAD has also increased its fighter coverage and has installed radar to monitor airspace over the continent.
THE WORLD TRADE CENTER
The collapse of both World Trade Center towers–and the smaller WTC 7 a few hours later–initially surprised even some experts. But subsequent studies have shown that the WTC’s structural integrity was destroyed by intense fire as well as the severe damage inflicted by the planes. That explanation hasn’t swayed conspiracy theorists, who contend that all three buildings were wired with explosives in advance and razed in a series of controlled demolitions.
Widespread Damage
CLAIM:The first hijacked plane crashed through the 94th to the 98th floors of the World Trade Center’s 110-story North Tower; the second jet slammed into the 78th to the 84th floors of the 110-story South Tower. The impact and ensuing fires disrupted elevator service in both buildings. Plus, the lobbies of both buildings were visibly damaged before the towers collapsed. “There is NO WAY the impact of the jet caused such widespread damage 80 stories below,” claims a posting on the San Diego Independent Media Center Web site (sandiego.indymedia.org). “It is OBVIOUS and irrefutable that OTHER EXPLOSIVES (… such as concussion bombs) HAD ALREADY BEEN DETONATED in the lower levels of tower one at the same time as the plane crash.”
FACT: Following up on a May 2002 preliminary report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a major study will be released in spring 2005 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce. NIST shared its initial findings with PM and made its lead researcher available to our team of reporters.
The NIST investigation revealed that plane debris sliced through the utility shafts at the North Tower’s core, creating a conduit for burning jet fuel–and fiery destruction throughout the building. “It’s very hard to document where the fuel went,” says Forman Williams, a NIST adviser and a combustion expert, “but if it’s atomized and combustible and gets to an ignition source, it’ll go off.”
Burning fuel traveling down the elevator shafts would have disrupted the elevator systems and caused extensive damage to the lobbies. NIST heard first-person testimony that “some elevators slammed right down” to the ground floor. “The doors cracked open on the lobby floor and flames came out and people died,” says James Quintiere, an engineering professor at the University of Maryland and a NIST adviser. A similar observation was made in the French documentary “9/11,” by Jules and Gedeon Naudet. As Jules Naudet entered the North Tower lobby, minutes after the first aircraft struck, he saw victims on fire, a scene he found too horrific to film.
“Melted” Steel
CLAIM: “We have been lied to,” announces the Web site AttackOnAmerica.net. “The first lie was that the load of fuel from the aircraft was the cause of structural failure. No kerosene fire can burn hot enough to melt steel.” The posting is entitled “Proof Of Controlled Demolition At The WTC.”
FACT: Jet fuel burns at 800° to 1500°F, not hot enough to melt steel (2750°F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn’t need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength–and that required exposure to much less heat. “I have never seen melted steel in a building fire,” says retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse Of Burning Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety. “But I’ve seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks.”
“Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F,” notes senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. “And at 1800° it is probably at less than 10 percent.” NIST also believes that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat.
But jet fuel wasn’t the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one of seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. NIST reports that pockets of fire hit 1832°F.
“The jet fuel was the ignition source,” Williams tells PM. “It burned for maybe 10 minutes, and [the towers] were still standing in 10 minutes. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsible for the heat transfer that eventually brought them down.”
Puffs Of Dust
CLAIM:As each tower collapsed, clearly visible puffs of dust and debris were ejected from the sides of the buildings. An advertisement in The New York Times for the book Painful Questions: An Analysis Of The September 11th Attack made this claim: “The concrete clouds shooting out of the buildings are not possible from a mere collapse. They do occur from explosions.” Numerous conspiracy theorists cite Van Romero, an explosives expert and vice president of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, who was quoted on 9/11 by the Albuquerque Journal as saying “there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse.” The article continues, “Romero said the collapse of the structures resembled those of controlled implosions used to demolish old structures.”
FACT: Once each tower began to collapse, the weight of all the floors above the collapsed zone bore down with pulverizing force on the highest intact floor. Unable to absorb the massive energy, that floor would fail, transmitting the forces to the floor below, allowing the collapse to progress downward through the building in a chain reaction. Engineers call the process “pancaking,” and it does not require an explosion to begin, according to David Biggs, a structural engineer at Ryan-Biggs Associates and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) team that worked on the FEMA report.
Like all office buildings, the WTC towers contained a huge volume of air. As they pancaked, all that air–along with the concrete and other debris pulverized by the force of the collapse–was ejected with enormous energy. “When you have a significant portion of a floor collapsing, it’s going to shoot air and concrete dust out the window,” NIST lead investigator Shyam Sunder tells PM. Those clouds of dust may create the impression of a controlled demolition, Sunder adds, “but it is the floor pancaking that leads to that perception.”
Demolition expert Romero regrets that his comments to the Albuquerque Journal became fodder for conspiracy theorists. “I was misquoted in saying that I thought it was explosives that brought down the building,” he tells PM. “I only said that that’s what it looked like.”
Romero, who agrees with the scientific conclusion that fire triggered the collapses, demanded a retraction from the Journal. It was printed Sept. 22, 2001. “I felt like my scientific reputation was on the line.” But emperors-clothes.com saw something else: “The paymaster of Romero’s research institute is the Pentagon. Directly or indirectly, pressure was brought to bear, forcing Romero to retract his original statement.” Romero responds: “Conspiracy theorists came out saying that the government got to me. That is the farthest thing from the truth. This has been an albatross around my neck for three years.”
VIOLENT COLLAPSE: Pancaking floors–not controlled demolition–expel debris and smoke out South Tower windows. PHOTOGRAPH BY AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS
Seismic Spikes
CLAIM:Seismographs at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., 21 miles north of the WTC, recorded the events of 9/11. “The strongest jolts were all registered at the beginning of the collapses, well before falling debris struck the earth,” reports the Web site WhatReallyHappened.com.
A columnist on Prisonplanet.com, a Web site run by radio talk show host Alex Jones, claims the seismic spikes (boxed area on Graph 1) are “indisputable proof that massive explosions brought down” the towers. The Web site says its findings are supported by two seismologists at the observatory, Won-Young Kim and Arthur Lerner-Lam. Each “sharp spike of short duration,” says Prisonplanet.com, was consistent with a “demolition-style implosion.”
FACT:”There is no scientific basis for the conclusion that explosions brought down the towers,” Lerner-Lam tells PM. “That representation of our work is categorically incorrect and not in context.”
The report issued by Lamont-Doherty includes various graphs showing the seismic readings produced by the planes crashing into the two towers as well as the later collapse of both buildings. WhatReallyHappened.com chooses to display only one graph (Graph 1), which shows the readings over a 30-minute time span.
On that graph, the 8- and 10-second collapses appear–misleadingly–as a pair of sudden spikes. Lamont-Doherty’s 40-second plot of the same data (Graph 2) gives a much more detailed picture: The seismic waves–blue for the South Tower, red for the North Tower–start small and then escalate as the buildings rumble to the ground. Translation: no bombs.
WTC 7 Collapse
CLAIM:Seven hours after the two towers fell, the 47-story WTC 7 collapsed. According to 911review.org: “The video clearly shows that it was not a collapse subsequent to a fire, but rather a controlled demolition: amongst the Internet investigators, the jury is in on this one.”
FACT: Many conspiracy theorists point to FEMA’s preliminary report, which said there was relatively light damage to WTC 7 prior to its collapse. With the benefit of more time and resources, NIST researchers now support the working hypothesis that WTC 7 was far more compromised by falling debris than the FEMA report indicated. “The most important thing we found was that there was, in fact, physical damage to the south face of building 7,” NIST’s Sunder tells PM. “On about a third of the face to the center and to the bottom–approximately 10 stories–about 25 percent of the depth of the building was scooped out.” NIST also discovered previously undocumented damage to WTC 7’s upper stories and its southwest corner.
NIST investigators believe a combination of intense fire and severe structural damage contributed to the collapse, though assigning the exact proportion requires more research. But NIST’s analysis suggests the fall of WTC 7 was an example of “progressive collapse,” a process in which the failure of parts of a structure ultimately creates strains that cause the entire building to come down. Videos of the fall of WTC 7 show cracks, or “kinks,” in the building’s facade just before the two penthouses disappeared into the structure, one after the other. The entire building fell in on itself, with the slumping east side of the structure pulling down the west side in a diagonal collapse.
According to NIST, there was one primary reason for the building’s failure: In an unusual design, the columns near the visible kinks were carrying exceptionally large loads, roughly 2000 sq. ft. of floor area for each floor. “What our preliminary analysis has shown is that if you take out just one column on one of the lower floors,” Sunder notes, “it could cause a vertical progression of collapse so that the entire section comes down.”
There are two other possible contributing factors still under investigation: First, trusses on the fifth and seventh floors were designed to transfer loads from one set of columns to another. With columns on the south face apparently damaged, high stresses would likely have been communicated to columns on the building’s other faces, thereby exceeding their load-bearing capacities.
Second, a fifth-floor fire burned for up to 7 hours. “There was no firefighting in WTC 7,” Sunder says. Investigators believe the fire was fed by tanks of diesel fuel that many tenants used to run emergency generators. Most tanks throughout the building were fairly small, but a generator on the fifth floor was connected to a large tank in the basement via a pressurized line. Says Sunder: “Our current working hypothesis is that this pressurized line was supplying fuel [to the fire] for a long period of time.”
WTC 7 might have withstood the physical damage it received, or the fire that burned for hours, but those combined factors–along with the building’s unusual construction–were enough to set off the chain-reaction collapse.
FINE LINES: Revisionists say sharp spikes (graph 1, above) mean bombs toppled the WTC. Scientists disprove the claim with the more detailed graph 2 (below).
Seismograph readings by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University/Won-Young Kim (senior research scientist)/Arthur Lerner-Lam (associate director)/Mary Tobin (senior science writer)/www.ldeo.columbia.edu/lcsn
FIRE STORM: WTC 7 stands amid the rubble of the recently collapsed Twin Towers. Damaged by falling debris, the building then endures a fire that rages for hours. Experts say this combination, not a demolition-style implosion, led to the roofline “kink†that signals WTC 7’s progressive collapse. PHOTOGRAPH BY NEW YORK OFFICE OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
THE PENTAGON
At 9:37 am on 9/11, 51 minutes after the first plane hit the World Trade Center, the Pentagon was similarly attacked. Though dozens of witnesses saw a Boeing 757 hit the building, conspiracy advocates insist there is evidence that a missile or a different type of plane smashed into the Pentagon.
HQ ATTACK: Taken three days after 9/11, this photo shows the extent of the damage to the Pentagon, consistent with a fiery plane crash. PHOTOGRAPH BY DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Big Plane, Small Holes
CLAIM: Two holes were visible in the Pentagon immediately after the attack: a 75-ft.-wide entry hole in the building’s exterior wall, and a 16-ft.-wide hole in Ring C, the Pentagon’s middle ring. Conspiracy theorists claim both holes are far too small to have been made by a Boeing 757. “How does a plane 125 ft. wide and 155 ft. long fit into a hole which is only 16 ft. across?” asks reopen911.org, a Web site “dedicated to discovering the bottom line truth to what really occurred on September 11, 2001.”
The truth is of even less importance to French author Thierry Meyssan, whose baseless assertions are fodder for even mainstream European and Middle Eastern media. In his book The Big Lie, Meyssan concludes that the Pentagon was struck by a satellite-guided missile–part of an elaborate U.S. military coup. “This attack,” he writes, “could only be committed by United States military personnel against other U.S. military personnel.”
FACT: When American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon’s exterior wall, Ring E, it created a hole approximately 75 ft. wide, according to the ASCE Pentagon Building Performance Report. The exterior facade collapsed about 20 minutes after impact, but ASCE based its measurements of the original hole on the number of first-floor support columns that were destroyed or damaged. Computer simulations confirmed the findings.
Why wasn’t the hole as wide as a 757’s 124-ft.-10-in. wingspan? A crashing jet doesn’t punch a cartoon-like outline of itself into a reinforced concrete building, says ASCE team member Mete Sozen, a professor of structural engineering at Purdue University. In this case, one wing hit the ground; the other was sheared off by the force of the impact with the Pentagon’s load-bearing columns, explains Sozen, who specializes in the behavior of concrete buildings. What was left of the plane flowed into the structure in a state closer to a liquid than a solid mass. “If you expected the entire wing to cut into the building,” Sozen tells PM, “it didn’t happen.”
The tidy hole in Ring C was 12 ft. wide–not 16 ft. ASCE concludes it was made by the jet’s landing gear, not by the fuselage.
HOLE TRUTH: Flight 77’s landing gear punched a 12-ft. hole into the Pentagon’s Ring C. PHOTOGRAPH BY DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Intact Windows
CLAIM:Many Pentagon windows remained in one piece–even those just above the point of impact from the Boeing 757 passenger plane. Pentagonstrike.co.uk, an online animation widely circulated in the United States and Europe, claims that photographs showing “intact windows” directly above the crash site prove “a missile” or “a craft much smaller than a 757″ struck the Pentagon.
FACT: Some windows near the impact area did indeed survive the crash. But that’s what the windows were supposed to do–they’re blast-resistant.
“A blast-resistant window must be designed to resist a force significantly higher than a hurricane that’s hitting instantaneously,” says Ken Hays, executive vice president of Masonry Arts, the Bessemer, Ala., company that designed, manufactured and installed the Pentagon windows. Some were knocked out of the walls by the crash and the outer ring’s later collapse. “They were not designed to receive wracking seismic force,” Hays notes. “They were designed to take in inward pressure from a blast event, which apparently they did: [Before the collapse] the blinds were still stacked neatly behind the window glass.”
Flight 77 Debris
CLAIM:Conspiracy theorists insist there was no plane wreckage at the Pentagon. “In reality, a Boeing 757 was never found,” claims pentagonstrike.co.uk, which asks the question, “What hit the Pentagon on 9/11?”
FACT:Blast expert Allyn E. Kilsheimer was the first structural engineer to arrive at the Pentagon after the crash and helped coordinate the emergency response. “It was absolutely a plane, and I’ll tell you why,” says Kilsheimer, CEO of KCE Structural Engineers PC, Washington, D.C. “I saw the marks of the plane wing on the face of the building. I picked up parts of the plane with the airline markings on them. I held in my hand the tail section of the plane, and I found the black box.” Kilsheimer’s eyewitness account is backed up by photos of plane wreckage inside and outside the building. Kilsheimer adds: “I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?”
AFTERMATH: Wreckage from Flight 77 on the Pentagon’s lawn–proof that a passenger plane, not a missile, hit the building. PHOTOGRAPH BY AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS
FLIGHT 93
Cockpit recordings indicate the passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 teamed up to attack their hijackers, forcing down the plane near Shanksville, in southwestern Pennsylvania. But conspiracy theorists assert Flight 93 was destroyed by a heat-seeking missile from an F-16 or a mysterious white plane. Some theorists add far-fetched elaborations: No terrorists were aboard, or the passengers were drugged. The wildest is the “bumble planes” theory, which holds that passengers from Flights 11, 175 and 77 were loaded onto Flight 93 so the U.S. government could kill them.
The White Jet
CLAIM:At least six eyewitnesses say they saw a small white jet flying low over the crash area almost immediately after Flight 93 went down. BlogD.com theorizes that the aircraft was downed by “either a missile fired from an Air Force jet, or via an electronic assault made by a U.S. Customs airplane reported to have been seen near the site minutes after Flight 93 crashed.” WorldNetDaily.com weighs in: “Witnesses to this low-flying jet … told their story to journalists. Shortly thereafter, the FBI began to attack the witnesses with perhaps the most inane disinformation ever–alleging the witnesses actually observed a private jet at 34,000 ft. The FBI says the jet was asked to come down to 5000 ft. and try to find the crash site. This would require about 20 minutes to descend.”
FACT: There was such a jet in the vicinity–a Dassault Falcon 20 business jet owned by the VF Corp. of Greensboro, N.C., an apparel company that markets Wrangler jeans and other brands. The VF plane was flying into Johnstown-Cambria airport, 20 miles north of Shanksville. According to David Newell, VF’s director of aviation and travel, the FAA’s Cleveland Center contacted copilot Yates Gladwell when the Falcon was at an altitude “in the neighborhood of 3000 to 4000 ft.”–not 34,000 ft. “They were in a descent already going into Johnstown,” Newell adds. “The FAA asked them to investigate and they did. They got down within 1500 ft. of the ground when they circled. They saw a hole in the ground with smoke coming out of it. They pinpointed the location and then continued on.” Reached by PM, Gladwell confirmed this account but, concerned about ongoing harassment by conspiracy theorists, asked not to be quoted directly.
Roving Engine
CLAIM:One of Flight 93’s engines was found “at a considerable distance from the crash site,” according to Lyle Szupinka, a state police officer on the scene who was quoted in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Offering no evidence, a posting on Rense.com claimed: “The main body of the engine … was found miles away from the main wreckage site with damage comparable to that which a heat-seeking missile would do to an airliner.”
FACT: Experts on the scene tell PM that a fan from one of the engines was recovered in a catchment basin, downhill from the crash site. Jeff Reinbold, the National Park Service representative responsible for the Flight 93 National Memorial, confirms the direction and distance from the crash site to the basin: just over 300 yards south, which means the fan landed in the direction the jet was traveling. “It’s not unusual for an engine to move or tumble across the ground,” says Michael K. Hynes, an airline accident expert who investigated the crash of TWA Flight 800 out of New York City in 1996. “When you have very high velocities, 500 mph or more,” Hynes says, “you are talking about 700 to 800 ft. per second. For something to hit the ground with that kind of energy, it would only take a few seconds to bounce up and travel 300 yards.” Numerous crash analysts contacted by PM concur.
Indian Lake
CLAIM:”Residents and workers at businesses outside Shanksville, Somerset County, reported discovering clothing, books, papers and what appeared to be human remains,” states a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article dated Sept. 13, 2001. “Others reported what appeared to be crash debris floating in Indian Lake, nearly 6 miles from the immediate crash scene.” Commenting on reports that Indian Lake residents collected debris, Think AndAsk.com speculates: “On Sept. 10, 2001, a strong cold front pushed through the area, and behind it–winds blew northerly. Since Flight 93 crashed west-southwest of Indian Lake, it was impossible for debris to fly perpendicular to wind direction. … The FBI lied.” And the significance of widespread debris? Theorists claim the plane was breaking up before it crashed. TheForbiddenKnowledge.com states bluntly: “Without a doubt, Flight 93 was shot down.”
FACT:Wallace Miller, Somerset County coroner, tells PM no body parts were found in Indian Lake. Human remains were confined to a 70-acre area directly surrounding the crash site. Paper and tiny scraps of sheetmetal, however, did land in the lake. “Very light debris will fly into the air, because of the concussion,” says former National Transportation Safety Board investigator Matthew McCormick. Indian Lake is less than 1.5 miles southeast of the impact crater–not 6 miles–easily within range of debris blasted skyward by the heat of the explosion from the crash. And the wind that day was northwesterly, at 9 to 12 mph, which means it was blowing from the northwest–toward Indian Lake.
Map by International Mapping
F-16 Pilot
CLAIM:In February 2004, retired Army Col. Donn de Grand-Pre said on “The Alex Jones Show,” a radio talk show broadcast on 42 stations: “It [Flight 93] was taken out by the North Dakota Air Guard. I know the pilot who fired those two missiles to take down 93.” LetsRoll911.org, citing de Grand-Pre, identifies the pilot: “Major Rick Gibney fired two Sidewinder missiles at the aircraft and destroyed it in midflight at precisely 0958.”
FACT: Saying he was reluctant to fuel debate by responding to unsubstantiated charges, Gibney (a lieutenant colonel, not a major) declined to comment. According to Air National Guard spokesman Master Sgt. David Somdahl, Gibney flew an F-16 that morning–but nowhere near Shanksville. He took off from Fargo, N.D., and flew to Bozeman, Mont., to pick up Ed Jacoby Jr., the director of the New York State Emergency Management Office. Gibney then flew Jacoby from Montana to Albany, N.Y., so Jacoby could coordinate 17,000 rescue workers engaged in the state’s response to 9/11. Jacoby confirms the day’s events. “I was in Big Sky for an emergency managers meeting. Someone called to say an F-16 was landing in Bozeman. From there we flew to Albany.” Jacoby is outraged by the claim that Gibney shot down Flight 93. “I summarily dismiss that because Lt. Col. Gibney was with me at that time. It disgusts me to see this because the public is being misled. More than anything else it disgusts me because it brings up fears. It brings up hopes–it brings up all sorts of feelings, not only to the victims’ families but to all the individuals throughout the country, and the world for that matter. I get angry at the misinformation out there.”
——————————————————————————–
REPORTING: Benjamin Chertoff, Davin Coburn, Michael Connery, David Enders, Kevin Haynes, Kristin Roth, Tracy Saelinger, Erik Sofge and the editors of POPULAR MECHANICS.
PHOTOGRAPHY RESEARCH: Sarah Shatz.
SOURCES: For a list of experts consulted during the preparation of this article, click here.
——————————————————————————–
PM consulted more than 300 experts and organizations in its investigation into 9/11 conspiracy theories. The following were particularly helpful.
Air Crash Analysis
Cleveland Center regional air traffic control
Bill Crowley special agent, FBI
Ron Dokell president, Demolition Consultants
Richard Gazarik staff writer, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Yates Gladwell pilot, VF Corp.
Michael K. Hynes, Ed.D.,
ATP, CFI, A&P/IA president, Hynes Aviation Services; expert, aviation crashes
Ed Jacoby Jr. director,
New York State Emergency Management Office (Ret.); chairman, New York State Disaster Preparedness Commission (Ret.)
Johnstown-Cambria County Airport Authority
Cindi Lash staff writer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Matthew McCormick manager, survival factors division, National Transportation Safety Board (Ret.)
Wallace Miller coroner, Somerset County, PA
Robert Nagan meteorological technician, Climate Services Branch, National Climatic Data Center
Dave Newell director, aviation and travel, VF Corp.
James O’Toole politics editor, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pennsylvania State Police Public Information Office
Jeff Pillets senior writer,
The Record, Hackensack, NJ
Jeff Rienbold director, Flight 93 National Memorial, National Park Service
Dennis Roddy staff writer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Master Sgt. David Somdahl public affairs officer,
119th Wing, North Dakota
Air National Guard
Mark Stahl photographer; eyewitness, United Airlines Flight 93 crash scene
Air Defense
Lt. Col. Skip Aldous (Ret.) squadron commander,
U.S. Air Force
Tech. Sgt. Laura Bosco public affairs officer,
Tyndall Air Force Base
Boston Center regional air traffic control
Laura Brown spokeswoman,
Federal Aviation Administration
Todd Curtis, Ph.D. founder, Airsafe.com; president, Airsafe.com Foundation
Keith Halloway public affairs officer, National Transportation Safety Board
Ted Lopatkiewicz director, public affairs, National Transportation Safety Board
Maj. Douglas Martin public affairs officer,
North American Aerospace Defense Command
Lt. Herbert McConnell public affairs officer,
Andrews AFB
Michael Perini public affairs officer, North American Aerospace Defense Command
John Pike director, GlobalSecurity.org
Hank Price spokesman, Federal
Aviation Administration
Warren Robak RAND Corp.
Bill Shumann spokesman,
Federal Aviation Administration
Louis Walsh public affairs officer, Eglin AFB
Chris Yates aviation security editor, analyst, Jane’s Transport
Aviation
Fred E.C. Culick, Ph.D., S.B., S.M. professor of aeronautics, California Institute of Technology
Robert Everdeen public affairs, Northrop Grumman
Clint Oster professor of public and environmental affairs, Indiana University; aviation safety expert
Capt. Bill Scott (Ret. USAF) Rocky Mountain bureau chief, Aviation Week
Bill Uher News Media Office, NASA Langley Research Center
Col. Ed Walby (Ret. USAF)
director, business development, HALE Systems Enterprise, Unmanned Systems, Northrop Grumman
Image Analysis
William F. Baker member, FEMA Probe Team; partner, Skidmore, Owings, Merrill
W. Gene Corley, Ph.D., P.E., S.E. senior vice president, CTL Group; director,
FEMA Probe Team
Bill Daly senior vice president, Control Risks Group
Steve Douglass image analysis consultant, Aviation Week
Thomas R. Edwards, Ph.D. founder, TREC; video forensics expert.
Ronald Greeley, Ph.D. professor of geology, Arizona State University
Rob Howard freelance photographer; WTC eyewitness
Robert L. Parker, Ph.D. professor of geophysics,
University of California, San Diego
Structural Engineering / Building Collapse
Farid Alfawakhiri, Ph.D. senior engineer, American Institute of Steel Construction
David Biggs, P.E. structural engineer, Ryan-Biggs Associates; member, ASCE team for FEMA report
Robert Clarke structural engineer, Controlled Demolitions Group Ltd.
Glenn Corbett technical editor, Fire Engineering; member, NIST advisory committee
Vincent Dunn deputy fire chief (Ret.), FDNY; author, The Collapse Of Burning Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety
John Fisher, Ph.D. professor of civil engineering, Lehigh University; professor emeritus, Center for Advanced Technology; member, FEMA Probe Team
Ken Hays executive vice president, Masonry Arts
Christoph Hoffmann, Ph.D. professor of computer science, Purdue University; project director, September 11 Pentagon Attack Simulations Using LS-Dyna, Purdue University
Allyn E. Kilsheimer, P.E.
CEO, KCE Structural Engineers PC; chief structural engineer, Phoenix project; expert in blast recovery, concrete structures, emergency response
Won-Young Kim, Ph.D. seismologist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University
William Koplitz photo desk manager, FEMA
John Labriola freelance photographer, WTC survivor
Arthur Lerner-Lam, Ph.D. seismologist; director,
Earth Institute, Center for Hazards and Risk Research, Columbia University
James Quintiere, Ph.D. professor of engineering, University of Maryland member, NIST advisory committee
Steve Riskus freelance photographer; eyewitness, Pentagon crash
Van Romero, Ph.D. vice president, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
Christine Shaffer spokesperson, Viracon
Mete Sozen, Ph.D., S.E. Kettelhut Distinguished Professor of Structural Engineering, Purdue University; member, Pentagon Building Performance Report; project conception, September 11 Pentagon Attack Simulations Using LS-Dyna, Purdue University
Shyam Sunder, Sc.D.
acting deputy director, lead investigator, Building and Fire Research Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Mary Tobin science writer, media relations, Earth Institute, Columbia University
Forman Williams, Ph.D. professor of engineering, physics, combustion, University of California,
San Diego; member, advisory committee, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Links referenced within this article
here
July 14th, 2006 at 12:20 pmhttp://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1230517.html
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/lcsn
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/lcsn
click here
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html?page=9&c=y
If anyone who support no questions asked about the Iraq war, I strongly recommend visiting the Vietnam Memorial wall in D.C. Look at ALL the names, they were real people. Someone’s father, brother, son, uncle, daughter, sister, cousin, classmate, neighbor. Also visit a VA hospital. See the true cost of war.
July 14th, 2006 at 12:44 pmYeah, the laughter is at a joke towards the soldier – it’s because the question was a tough one to answer and Rumsfeld (et al) knew he was passing a “on the spot” question to an officer.
And, no, I don’t care for Rumsfeld either.
July 14th, 2006 at 12:46 pmthanks WC.
July 14th, 2006 at 12:53 pm147
You bet!
July 14th, 2006 at 1:44 pm#134
Thanks for an explanation of the outrage.
There are some equipment shortages here, but by far the biggest problem is not money (the government is throwing tons of money at the war, and the IED problem in particuler. In the video of this thread you can hear Rumsfeld cite the 3.8 BILLION dollars for the IED threat) but rather the ability of contractors back home to produce the equipment we need fast enough.
Unlike previous wars (WW-I and II) when everyone at home was mobilized in support and had sacrifices (Rosie the riveter?) for today’s war it’s business as usual at home, and the only people back in the states giving us support are those horrible defense contractors making huge profits and getting yelled at by pacifists for it.
The problem with old buffalos is not money. It’s the fact that the company making buffalos isn’t any bigger.
July 14th, 2006 at 3:09 pmhey Dan–
I don’t exactly what the cause of the problem is–I do know, from my friend who was in Iraq, and from reading the many articles written about this, that there has been a recurring lack of equipment. The old buffalo may be a different problem–if indeed the problem is that contractors can’t make buffalos faster I would ask why isn’t the government doing this itself? much bigger issue, but it’s odd to me in general that the govt contracts out defense manufacturing. Maybe it makes sense for some things–I really don’t know.
but there is a separate problem — troops simply not getting the equipment they need (as noted in some other links I posted to earlier). The 2 problems are related in that they both speak to this government’s inability (perhaps for various reasons in different contexts) to get our troops what they need.
July 14th, 2006 at 3:34 pmeblair #151
In concur that there are equipment shortages across the board. I’m just not sure who to blame.
In the particular counter-IED work I do, which is highly technological, the problem is that contractors can’t make the stuff fast enough. I’d say that is probably true for large pieces of equipment.
I don’t think the problem is money. We have lots of money to spend.
But yes, there is a problem, probably somewhere up in the decision-making process on exactly how that largesse of billions is disbursed.
Thanks for the discussion.
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