By the way Wayne, in terms of alternative 9/11 theories, based upon your recent and aptly put denunciation of Exxon-Mobile, I should think you would find the book "Crossing the Rubicon" by Michael C. Ruppert right up your alley. All 674 pages are exhaustively researched and documented. I may not agree with everything Ruppert proposes, but I sure think he's providing some absolutely essential information on the subject of peak oil and the dirty shenanigans being played out behind the scenes. I should think you would find his book extraordinarily compelling.

As for you, Major, with your apparent background in the military, I suspect the book, "9/11 Synthetic Terror" by Webster Griffin Tarpley is definitely in line with your background interests. While I don't particularly care for Tarpley's personality, his research into false flag terrorism is so well documented, it's well worth the read, not to mention some serious time spent in contemplation. By the way, I suggest you pay special attention to role the British have apparently played in false-flag terrorist activities; not everything concerning 9/11 points to Islamic Terrorists or American traitors; Europe has a very big stake in this whole curious game.

I would be really interested in hearing both of your viewpoints on these books.

Two other very good books on 9/11 which do not necessarily suggest a particular "conspiracy" but certainly point out the areas where the official story is seriously wanting are "The 9/11 Commission Report; Omissions and Distortions" by David Ray Griffin and "The Terror Conspiracy" by Jim Marrs. Both books are well documented and do a very good job of pointing out the curious lack of qualified investigation that surrounded the 9/11 tragedy. I recommend them both as good all-around discussions of the events and questions that continue to surround 9/11.

Katie,

Just so you will know. Major is an old family name not a military rank as most people seem to think. However, I did serve both in the Navy and then again in the Army back in the very early 60’s before Veit Nam.

My viewpoint on those books? Well, I probably won’t be able to find copies to read. Being on a fixed income now I can not afford to go out and buy them. All my extra cash goes for veggie seeds and fish bait. And I live in a town of only 600 people so I doubt our small library will have them. but I will ask the next time I am over there.

As for Europe’s role in the mess in the Middle East, both the British and the French bring this latest round of conflict to us. The British are the ones that lead the push to make a homeland for the Jewish people in 1948. A move that really got all the Muslim Arabs all riled up. And the French for pulling their Foreign Legion out of North Africa where they were keeping the jihadists under control. The jihadists hate us (the USA) these days mostly for our support of Israel.

Still, I think it is important that people know that the jihadists have been fighting Europe for over a thousand years and the USA for almost 250 years. This whole thing is not something new to our time.

Maybe the 9/11 conspiracy theories would be better covered in another thread of its own.

quote:

Still, I think it is important that people know that the jihadists have been fighting Europe for over a thousand years and the USA for almost 250 years. This whole thing is not something new to our time.

History is fascinating, is it not? It certainly helps to put current events into perspective, but it can also be referenced selectively and misused to support a certain blind allegiance to ideology.

So please, if you're going to generalize and refer to all Muslims as jihadists, then you need to be fair and refer to the West (specifically the British, French and Americans you cite for supporting Israel) as Crusaders. Maybe that will serve to remind us all that the definition of "terrorist" is purely a matter of perspective.

quote:

So please, if you're going to generalize and refer to all Muslims as jihadists, then you need to be fair and refer to the West (specifically the British, French and Americans you cite for supporting Israel) as Crusaders. Maybe that will serve to remind us all that the definition of "terrorist" is purely a matter of perspective.

No where did I say that all Muslims were jihadists. Please do not put words in my mouth. I simple said that we have been fighting the jihadists for centuries. You chose to read into it that we have been out to get every Muslim and that simple is not so. And I would not label all the people in the USA or Europe as Crusaders either.

In fact, a ways back in this thread I said that I had a Muslim friend for several years. He would still be my friend if he hadn’t done something that has nothing to do with the war. In fact I said that most things that we see some Muslims do have to be taken on a case by case basis.

My only question that I have had in my own mind is why the average Muslim does not stand up and denounce the jihadists saying that they are the extreme and don’t speak for all Muslims. But I certainly won’t fault them for not speaking out because for over a thousand years they have seen those that did speak out put to death. They have a very hard time understanding our freedom of speech.

Okay I've been through this on another forum so I'm just going to make one brief post on it. First I am a civil engineer and took courses in college in structural design and materials science. Steel does not have to reach the melting point to lose its strength. As it heats up it expands, that is it increases in size in every direction. This can cause it to pop the bolts or welds or rivets(depending on how it was fastened). When they pop there is a noise much like a gun shot and that joint fails. If the joint is so over designed that it holds the next thing that happens as the temperature increases is that the steel reaches it's "yield temperature". This means while it hasn't melted it loses it's strength, think of raw versus cooked spaghetti. When the beams fail the building over them collapses down. This causes an impact load that is many times stronger than the dead load or weight the building framework is designed to carry. Then the floor under it collapses and then the one under that. All each floor collapses it compresses the air within and blows out the windows. Another thing to note is that these buildings contained fuel for emergency generators in various tanks.

About it looking like a controlled demolition. To do one of those an implode a building like this takes days to set up with jack hammers to expose the steel beams so dozens of carefully placed explosive charges can be placed. Kind of hard to do around thousands of people in a building that had suffered one previous terrorist bombing.

If you've been listening to Rosie though I've probably been wasting my time.

Major: You are, of course, quite right about Islamic militants. Not all Muslims are militant, but those that are will have, I fear, a very serious impact on the world as a whole for many years to come. One of the earliest histories of Islamic terrorism takes place in India, soon after the Islamic religion was born and it was a genocide; they have been murdering ever since. It is a mistake, however, to assume that by keeping a presence in the Middle East this will in any way contain Islamic terrorist's attacks. It won't. There are millions and millions of Muslims living in India, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand and Cambodia. Most of the horror going on in Africa today is the result of Muslim terrorists seeking to control that nation's natural resources (they have oil reserves too) and I could go on and on ad infinitum.

Six million Muslims live in France alone, and London is another notorious major recruiting point for Islamic terrorist activity. Britain and France, in my estimation anyway, are guilty of encouraging militant Islamic activity as the Euro banks attempt to woo powerful Islamic sheiks to switch OPEC oil currency standards from the dollar to the Euro in the attempt to control what is left of the oil. Based upon what I know from my own sources, I suspect that both Britain and France had a great deal to do with behind-the-scenes engineering of the 9/11 attacks.

Major, we do not have enough people to contain the world-wide influence of Islamic militants. What is happening is too spread out for any single country to contain and it is very dangerous indeed. But the one thing I am certain of is that there are very big banking and corporate interests attempting to wield Islamic terrorism to support their own control efforts, and the money and brains behind what is going on today goes way beyond the scope or capabilities of Al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization. What went on in 9/11 or many other terrorist attacks around the world for that matter, simply could not be pulled off without insider information from people who are directly involved with major corporate and intelligence interests, and not just from America, but from many, many countries.

Crack pot conspiracy theories? Oh there are a million of them out there, but when you begin to dig and dig deeply the implications of what went on and how huge the 9/11 insider information circuit had to have been, it's very grim indeed.

Islamic terrorists simply could not wield the power they wield today unless very sophisticated big business interests with heavy government and intelligence connections was backing them, and I fear those interests rest in the hands of the wealthy elitists from many nations around the world. Those "crack pot conspiracy theories" that simply attempt to put the blame on the shoulders of American government have very little grasp of how many nations are now involved in a death grip to control what is left of the worlds' oil reserves.

Middle Eastern Islamic terrorists may not be the ones engineering what is going on, but they certainly know that nobody gets to the oil unless they go through Islamic nationals first. From the looks of things, if that is the trump card the Islamic terrorists have to play, they intend to play it for all that it is worth.

And you are quite right. Jihad is nothing new. This hate has been going on since the days when the Old Testament God chose Isaac over Ishmael, as Ishmael is seen as the father of the Islamic race.

Apparently, some Islamic people hold a grudge for a very, very long time…

Mgulfcoastguy,

I was an engineer too when I still worked. While I was not a civil engineer I know that everything you stated here is true. Also, the framework of all buildings are places in certain patterns to carry the loads that the upper floors place on the lower floors. When a projectile like a plane disrupts those patterns the remaining beams and columns are overloaded and can fail for many different reasons even without fire. The fire just hastened the process.

Also that fire caused by the jet fuel, as it fell would detonate any natural gas lines that had been broken in the area surrounding the twin towers when they fell. That detonation would have added to the damage or destruction of surrounding buildings.

quote:

Apparently, some Islamic people hold a grudge for a very, very long time...

Indeed some of them do.

I seem to remember hearing something about a flight training school being concerned that a few foreign students wanted to learn how to fly jet airplanes, but had no interest in learning how to take off or land...and nobody took their concerns seriously, until it was too late. --J--

quote:

Originally posted by Major:
I have heard a lot of talk this election year about how some candidates are saying that they will get us out of the war we are in. But I have to think that those people have their head stuck in the sand like ostriches or that they really don’t have a firm grasp on reality. Don’t they know that the war on terror goes back over two hundred years

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

U.S. WAR AGAINST TERRORISTS GOES BACK TO FOUNDING FATHERS
(www.WorldNetDaily.com, 4/27/04)

Most Americans probably think the Islamic terrorists declared war on the United States Sept. 11, 2001. Actually, it started a long time before - right from the birth of the nation. In 1784, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin were commissioned by the first Congress to assemble in Paris to see about marketing U.S. products in Europe. Jefferson quickly surmised that the biggest challenge facing U.S. merchant ships were those referred to euphemistically as "Barbary pirates."

They weren't "pirates" at all in the traditional sense, Jefferson noticed. They didn't drink and chase women, and they really weren't out to strike it rich. Instead, their motivation was strictly religious. They bought and sold slaves, to be sure. They looted ships. But they used their booty to buy guns, ships, cannon and ammunition. Like those we call "terrorists" today, they saw themselves engaged in jihad and called themselves "mujahiddin." Gee, does that name ring any bells?

Why did these 18th-century terrorists represent such a grave threat to U.S. merchant ships? With independence from Great Britain, the former colonists lost the protection of the greatest navy in the world. The U.S. had no navy - not a single warship. Jefferson inquired of his European hosts how they dealt with the problem. He was stunned to find out that France and England both paid tribute to the fiends - who would, in turn, use the money to expand their own armada, buy more weaponry, hijack more commercial ships, enslave more innocent civilians and demand greater ransom. This didn't make sense to Jefferson. He recognized the purchase of peace from the Muslims only worked temporarily. They would always find an excuse to break an agreement, blame the Europeans and demand higher tribute.

A Very Different Policy

After three months researching the history of militant Islam, he came up with a very different policy to deal with the terrorists. But he didn't get to implement it until years later. As the first secretary of state, Jefferson urged the building of a navy to rescue American hostages held in North Africa and to deter future attacks on U.S. ships. In 1792, he commissioned John Paul Jones to go to Algiers under the guise of diplomatic negotiations, but with the real intent of sizing up a future target of a naval attack.

Jefferson was ready to retire a year later when what could only be described as "America's first Sept. 11" happened. America was struck with its first mega-terror attack by jihadists. In the fall of 1793, the Algerians seized 11 U.S. merchant ships and enslaved more than 100 Americans. When word of the attack reached New York, the stock market crashed. Voyages were canceled in every major port. Seamen were thrown out of work. Ship suppliers went out of business. What Sept. 11 did to the U.S. economy in 2001, the mass shipjacking of 1793 did to the fledgling U.S. economy in that year.

Accordingly, it took the U.S. Congress only four months to decide to build a fleet of warships. But even then, Congress didn't choose war as Jefferson prescribed. Instead, while building what would become the U.S. Navy, Congress sent diplomats to reason with the Algerians. The U.S. ended up paying close to $1 million and giving the pasha of Algiers a new warship, "The Crescent," to win release of 85 surviving American hostages.

It wasn't until 1801, under the presidency of Jefferson, that the U.S. engaged in what became a four-year war against Tripoli. And it wasn't until 1830, when France occupied Algiers, and later Tunisia and Morocco, that the terrorism on the high seas finally ended. France didn't leave North Africa until 1962 - and it quickly became a major base of terrorism once again.

What's the moral of the story?

Appeasement never works. Jefferson saw it. Sept. 11 was hardly the beginning. The war in which we fight today is the longest conflict in human history. It's time to learn from history, not repeat its mistakes.

Check out 'Why We Fight'

http://www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/

War stinks.

But we are in a new era of human life.

We are entering the post crude phase of our existence and we will see much more turmoil in the near future than just the few killings that have come our of our current war effort.

You see, we will be at war over crude until the last buckets have been sucked from the earth...so get used to it.

As we would leave the Middle East...China or Russia would step in.

See:

http://www.amazon.com/Resource-Wars-Landscape-Conflict-...uction/dp/0805055762

China has triple our pop and a fraction of our oil reserves within its borders.

So either we play bodyguard to the Middle East or China or Russia will.

We all like typing on the 'puter don't we?

Well, without the crude to make the diesel to power the train that brings the coal to the power plant you would not be typing on the 'puter.

But that is not all.

We are entering an era of peak natural gas, peak water, peak food, peak uranium. So many areas of new conflict are in our future.

Carving up a barrel of crude oil, we can see that barrel supplies many of our necessities of life.

Out of each barrel of crude we make the following products:

42% of each barrel of crude is used for Gasoline

21% Fuel oil - Diesel

8% Jet Fuel and Kerosene

8% Petrochemicals

Such as....

Solvents Bearing Grease Vaseline Ink Floor Wax Ball-point Pens Football Cleats Upholstery Sweaters Boats Insecticides Bicycle Tires Sports Car Bodies Nail Polish Fishing lures Dresses Tires Golf Bags Perfumes Cassettes Dishwasher Tool Boxes Shoe Polish Motorcycle Helmet Caulking Petroleum Jelly Transparent Tape CD Player Faucet Washers Antiseptics Clothesline Curtains Food Preservatives Basketballs Soap Vitamin Capsules Antihistamines Purses Shoes Dashboards Cortisone Deodorant Footballs Putty Dyes Panty Hose Refrigerant Percolators Life Jackets Rubbing Alcohol Linings Skis TV Cabinets Shag Rugs Electrician's Tape Tool Racks Car Battery Cases Epoxy Paint Mops Slacks Insect Repellent Oil Filters Umbrellas Yarn Fertilizers Hair Coloring Roofing Toilet Seats Fishing Rods Lipstick Denture Adhesive Linoleum Ice Cube Trays Synthetic Rubber Speakers Plastic Wood Electric Blankets Glycerin Tennis Rackets Rubber Cement Fishing Boots Dice Nylon Rope Candles Trash Bags House Paint Water Pipes Hand Lotion Roller Skates Surf Boards Shampoo Wheels Paint Rollers Shower Curtains Guitar Strings Luggage Aspirin Safety Glasses Antifreeze Football Helmets Awnings Eyeglasses Clothes Toothbrushes Ice Chests Footballs Combs CD's Paint Brushes Detergents Vaporizers Balloons Sun Glasses Tents Heart Valves Crayons Parachutes Telephones Enamel Pillows Dishes Cameras Anesthetics Artificial Turf Artificial limbs Bandages Dentures Model Cars Folding Doors Hair Curlers Cold cream Movie film Soft Contact lenses Drinking Cups Fan Belts Car Enamel Shaving Cream Ammonia Refrigerators Golf Balls Toothpaste

6% Propane

4% Heating Oil

3% Asphalt and Road oil

2% Petroleum coke

1% Lubricants

All these products will be history someday.

And in the big picture, we can't fix the problem, we can only postpone the inevitable. But buying a little more time would make things much more livable in the not so distant future than the current path we are headed in.

The world is in a death spiral and politicians as well as industry are pretending this problem does not exist. We can only blame ourselves, for it is just how we have built our world over the years....too many people, living outside of natures intended balance and not an infinite supply of energy to fuel all our demands.

It would be one thing if we all reverted back to rural living, burning trees for fuel and housing and living within our comfortable means allotted to us by nature, as our ancestors did back in the day. But ten billion people can't burn the trees! (Ten billion people is a conservative estimate of world population in the not so distant future. We are at 7 people billion now.)

The World Coal Institute estimates world energy reserves as follows:

"At current production levels coal will be available for at least the next 155 years compared to 41 years for oil and 65 years for gas."

http://www.worldcoal.org/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=21

Even though this was written a few years ago and it is based on 'current production and consumption' it gives the same haunting message to the generations to come.

We may not exactly see the end of our free flowing energy as we know it - but some of our descendants will in the not so distant future. This is the legacy they will inherit from us. But before the energy dries up completely massive changes in our world will have taken place.

Our population has grown to levels where it has passed the point of no return for supporting a sustainable human population as we know it today when it comes to their energy demands.

And leading the pack of over consumers is the USA.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_con-energy-oil-consumption

Consumption is ingrained in us and we know no other way. And even if we wished to amend our ways, how could all our retirement funds take the hit? America is built on borrowed money, spending and consumerism.

And what does all that consumerism lead to?

It leads to the mess we are in now and the bigger mess the world will be in once India and China pick up momentum to copycat the envious lifestyle that they have held in high esteem as the 'American Dream'

You see, the problem is not with the earth having enough land for all its people - the problem is with earth providing ad infinitum for all the needs the people crave.

The more people born, the more heat is produced from their life and all their cravings, As such, the warmer and more polluted the earth gets and the more energy they all use and the earths resources are depleted.

Fueling the problem of consumption is the games the Federal and World banks play with interest rates. They manage the economies in ways to fuel consumption and mask the real trend. Witness the recent cries for Federal bankers to lower interest rates...so the stock market can go up...fueled by spending of the consumer.

It is drug habit that Greenspan got us hooked on and we just can't get away from.

Our economy is not based on sustainable health - it is based low interest credit to encourage compulsive spending, debt and living a life of constant consumption with a 'disposable mentality' when it comes to durable goods.

All this consumption to artificially fuel our economy to make our retirement funds only go up contributes to more and more global warming and the depletion of our natural resources. Then the governments juggle the numbers to make the inflation figures seem artificially low, so everyone's retirement portfolio will make them happy so they will continue to buy and consume more...and on it goes....IT IS ALL WE KNOW

You see, no other animal destroys its environment except mankind. We are the only ones that do not accept and live within our comfortable means. We not only debt with our finances we debt with our environment. What we are borrowing in terms of petroleum, coal and natural gas takes millions of years for nature to make. Yet we are using it all up in just a few hundred years...we can never pay it back.

Without energy our country is open for takeover ... no jets...no tanks...no transport on the ground or in the air. Luckily we will still have nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers as long as the uranium holds out. But the jets on the flattop all use jet fuel. All the supplies for those subs and carriers petroleum dependent. So long before the crude dries up the government must 'secure a supply' of crude for it own needs.

Other countries such as Russia that have a good supply of crude may not be so kind to keep on selling it to us and we need a 'local and continual' source somewhat within our borders. You see, jet fuel as well as gasoline deteriorates and cannot be stored indefinitely. So we must always be producing some of it to replace the stale stuff to supply the military. But, that's why we elect politicians to deal with these troubles

As our world changes and our drug supply dries up, things will only get worse. And the bigger the city - the bigger the hellhole it will become. And this time RIGHT NOW is the defining moment as to whether most of our population will die off or not in the crisis that awaits us in the not so distant future.

quote:

About it looking like a controlled demolition. To do one of those an implode a building like this takes days to set up with jack hammers to expose the steel beams so dozens of carefully placed explosive charges can be placed.

Mgulfcoastguy, I am very aware that it takes days to set up a controlled demolition. In which case it is only logical to ask how in heavens name the WTC 7 building went down. In a PBS documentary entitled "America Rebuilds", which aired in September of 2002, Larry Silverstein (owner of the building) made the following statement about building 7:

"I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse."

And you are precisely right, mgulfcoastguy, they could NOT have "pulled" the building (slang for demolition by explosives) unless the explosive charges had already been placed, because it does take several days to properly place the charges so a building comes straight down like WTC 7 did. That's a major point in the 9/11 Truth Movement. A whole lot of people have a whole lot of questions about that.

As to your engineer expertise, though I have no doubt you are qualified, I have already read about 100 different opinions from engineers and there are several differing camps of opinions. I have also read the reports from the fire marshals who undoubtedly have a great deal of experience in the way fire effects steel. They have some serious questions, and none of them are in the least bit happy with the answers that have been given so far.

allenwrench,

While that is very interesting and very true it is also off the point of this thread which was to point out that the war we are in now did not start on 9/11 or with the current administration. That was all I was saying.

But it does show how there isn’t going to be much peace in the world any time soon so we better choose a leader who is capable of defending us and our interests. I am worried however that I don’t see any of the candidates from either side very qualified to fill that role.

Thank heavens most of us here on this web site can at least grow some of our own food. That will help us out for a little bit.

quote:

I am worried however that I don’t see any of the candidates from either side very qualified to fill that role.

I don't see those candidates either. And they aren't even talking about protecting folks at home in the debates. Our water supplies are especially at risk. I worry about that.

And I won't say anything more about 9/11 on this thread. Sorry...