“We have come…to tolerate fixed opinions…each with its own baffles of invective and counterinvective, of euphemism and downright misstatement…. The inevitability of going to war with Iraq was accepted as if predestined.” —Joan Didion, November 2002 https://t.co/MnuGUmqigl
— The New York Review of Books (@nybooks) March 20, 2023
Category: Terra Terra Terra!
Just looking
BREAKING: A suspected Chinese surveillance balloon has been hovering over the northern U.S. for the past few days, and the U.S. government has discussed shooting it out of the sky, officials tell @NBCNews. https://t.co/L9A3NMbIVz
— NBC News World (@NBCNewsWorld) February 2, 2023
Elmo’s really taken Twitter to a new level
Terrorist tweeters: Taliban start buying blue ticks on Twitter – BBC News https://t.co/PHi6aGlRPK
— Frank Figliuzzi (@FrankFigliuzzi1) January 18, 2023
Finally
It took nearly 34 years, but the U.S. says it has apprehended the terrorist who killed 270 people when the bomb he made exploded on a Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland. https://t.co/vkaz3JjVxI
— David Beard (@dabeard) December 11, 2022
Terrorism = ‘vandalism’
Interesting. The Emily Grace Rainey in this article is the same Emily Grace Rainey me @StorytellerSBM and @JZBleiberg wrote about for the @AP – she was a psychological operations officer who led a group of people from NC to DC on Jan. 6. https://t.co/TowL5vXw58
— James LaPorta (@JimLaPorta) December 4, 2022
Yes we did
CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach interrogators torture techniques https://t.co/r5LGssymo0
— Suburban Guerrilla Ω (@SusieMadrak) March 15, 2022
If we really support the troops
We need to take care of them:
Kate Hendricks Thomas was repeatedly exposed to burn pits during her service in Iraq and later developed Stage IV breast cancer.
The Honoring our PACT Act will make sure toxic-exposed veterans like Kate do not have to fight VA for the care and benefits they've earned. ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/bgH7zN14Xb
— House Veterans' Affairs (@VetAffairsDems) March 7, 2022
Good question
I never, ever believe the official version of what happened in a situation like this:
BREAKING: Biden says US Special Ops commandos killed ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi in Syria.
The hours-long op took place in Idlib. He was killed at beginning of the op when he detonated a bomb, killing himself and members of his family. https://t.co/TIyOuBNcYo pic.twitter.com/7dEOEkreWr
— Rita Katz (@Rita_Katz) February 3, 2022
I was the reporter who asked about whether the U.S. would provide evidence to back up statements about a suicide bomb. https://t.co/7a03ahStZz
— Ayesha Rascoe (@ayesharascoe) February 3, 2022
Rewriting 9/11
Some gaping holes in Yer Librul Media’s 9/11 coverage. For one, they went right back into propaganda mode by repeating the lie that the reason for the attack was “they hate us for our values.” Bin Laden was always quite clear: We were attacked because of supporting Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, and our presence and support in other countries where Muslims were being oppressed. Doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker, but oh well.
Also, they completely erased the part played by then-Sen. Hillary Clinton in getting New York back on its feet and looking out for first responders. I guess I expected that.
But to allow the odious George W. Bush to make a nice speech and thus erase his administration’s bungling (and possible complicity) of the intelligence leading up to the attacks? Don’t take my word for it. Remember Richard Clarke? He was all over the teevee there for a few years, talking about he couldn’t even get the Bush people to hold a meeting about the imminent threat, and when they finally did?
At the first Deputies Committee meeting on terrorism, held in April 2001, Clarke strongly suggested that the U.S. put pressure on both the Taliban and al-Qaeda by arming the Northern Alliance and other groups in Afghanistan. Simultaneously, he said that the US should target bin Laden and his leadership by restoring flights of the MQ-1 Predators. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz responded, “Well, I just don’t understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man bin Laden.” Clarke replied that he was talking about bin Laden and his network because it posed “an immediate and serious threat to the United States.” According to Clarke, Wolfowitz turned to him and said, “You give bin Laden too much credit. He could not do all these things like the 1993 attack on New York, not without a state sponsor. Just because the FBI and CIA have failed to find the linkages does not mean they don’t exist.”
And here at 15:12, Bruce Reidel, then-senior adviser on the Middle East for four administrations, describes the Bush administration’s stubborn refusal to deal with what all the intelligence described as an imminent threat.
He said there was clear information all summer warning that an attack inside the U.S. was imminent. “The CIA director went ‘door to door’ at the White House warning of an imminent attack. Unfortunately, the Bush administration didn’t do anything about it.
“There was great concern at the White House that an investigation of what had happened would find that the administration had bungled the job very, very badly. So they wanted very much to go on offense, and to take action.”
Remember the Project for the New American Century? We probably won’t know in our lifetimes whether this Bush & Cheney gang simply took advantage of their own catastrophic mistakes to impose their vision on the Middle East (unsuccessfully, I might add), or whether they were directly complicit. Incompetence is a form of complicity, right? And the results were the same.
We know know it was the Saudis all along, just as we Dirty Fucking Hippies always said:
The FBI has released the first of what are expected to be several documents from its investigation into whether agents of the Saudi Arabian government provided support to the Sept. 11, 2001 terror plot. https://t.co/eW7xHy2Pw1
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) September 12, 2021
Here’s what it all boils down to: Over a million Iraqis dead because the boys in the Bush administration wanted to remodel the Middle East.
Death and suffering in Iraq a painful legacy of 9/11 attacks (from @AP) https://t.co/sIAis2N2Yf
— Dean Edwards (@ekoskaiphos) September 12, 2021
This contradicts the media narrative
You know, the one about the United States recklessly selling Americans out to the Taliban?
Taliban members escorted Americans to gates at Kabul airport in secret arrangement with UShttps://t.co/JrMDrlbAbe
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) August 31, 2021