Round up...

Earth's temperature nears million-year high --Reuters

Al Qaeda gains recruits from Iraq war: UN study --Reuters

The 9/11 Report and Ali Mohamed, Al Qaeda's Chief Terrorism Trainer --Peter Dale Scott via 911blogger.com

Most Iraqis Favor Immediate U.S. Pullout, Polls Show --The Washington Post

New Poll Says Majority of Iraqis Approve of Attacks on U.S. Forces --ABC News

Afghan suicide bombers soar as Taliban blame outsiders --The Herald

Congressman Wants FBI Anthrax Briefing --AP (Interesting how this common 'conspiracy theory' prevented an investigation of the real suspects, don't you think?)

"In his letter to Mueller, Holt said the FBI's failure to determine what kind of anthrax was used meant that 'resources were diverted and countless agents wasted their time investigating a small pool of suspects, instead of the broader search we now know was needed.'

...Beecher recently wrote an article in a scientific journal saying there was 'a widely circulated misconception" that the anthrax spores were made using additives and sophisticated engineering akin to military weapons production.'"

CIA Mole Killed in Basra --Kurt Nimmo

Second NIE Covered Up? --MSNBC via Crooks & Liars

Emergency Paper Ballot Legislation Introduced in Senate --Brad Blog

Emergency Paper Ballot Legislation Introduced in House --Brad Blog

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Hardball --MSNBC via YouTube

Round up...

Ex-military officers criticize Rumsfeld --AP (Full video here, requires Real Player)

Army Warns Rumsfeld It's Billions Short --LA Times

"According to a senior Army official involved in budget talks, Schoomaker is now seeking $138.8 billion in 2008, nearly $25 billion above budget limits originally set by Rumsfeld. The Army's budget this year is $98.2 billion, making Schoomaker's request a 41% increase over current levels."

Proposal to carve up Iraq moves forward --AP

Torture Victim Had No Terror Link, Canada Told US --The New York Times (This case illustrates exactly why the 'compromise bill' will be ineffective. The legislation is nothing but a political tool for fake 'Rebel Republicans'.)

Sources complain of US involvement in Afghan opium trade --Wayne Madsen Report (Sept. 24/25)

Disinformation used to diffuse controversy regarding Pakistan-Taliban relations --Wayne Madsen Report (Sept. 24/25) (Ruppert concurs)

CIA paid millions for Al-Qaeda prisoners: Musharraf --AFP

Losing Afghanistan --Newsweek

'SLINGIN MUD' --Tampa Bay Scene via Brad Blog (Curtis/Feeney/Lemme/vote-rigging software story gets coverage.)

Round up...

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat --The New York Times

Omar role in truce reinforces fears that Pakistan 'caved in' to Taliban --The Telegraph

NSA Whistle-blower Says He Has Lost His Livelihood --ABC (The Blotter)

New Anthrax Theory Offered --Hartford Courant (New? This is 'Déjà Vu'. Contradicting stories, never any answers.)

New US Plot against Cuba, Venezuela --Prensa Latina

Round up...

Pentagon moves to second-stage planning for Iran strike option --Raw Story (Are the hawks really this crazy or are these leaks just meant to send a message?)

Who benefits from the Afghan Opium Trade? --Global Research

Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq --The Washington Post

Papers Show Bush Allies' Inside Access --AP

"The records showed Reed and [Grover] Norquist had extensive access to presidential aides, with at least 115 appointments at the White House since 2001. In some instances, Norquist stayed inside the White House for between eight hours and 12 hours at a time, the documents show."

Video: Extraordinary Rendition, Torture and Disappearances in the "War on Terror" --Information Clear House, witness.org

EMAILS: Bush Officials Blocked Scientist From Discussing Global Warming/Hurricane Link --Think Progress

The Secret Room, The Bush Administration's Surveillance Game --New American Media

Will the Next Election Be Hacked? --Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Jesus Camp --ABC via YouTube

Round up...

British Army expert casts doubt on 'liquid explosives' threat, Al-Qaeda network in UK revealed --Raw Story (Nafeez Ahmed)

Kill the Messenger --NSWBC



Tom Hayden: Withdraw from Iraq Or Carve It Up? --Huffington Post (Tom Hayden)

Retired Col. Sam Gardiner says we're in Iran right now --CNN video via Crooks & Liars (See Terror Ops Underway in Iran and Iraq plans to remove Penaton's proxy force)

IRS watches churches in mid-term campaign --UPI

Round up...

Ties With Terror: The Continuity of Western-Al-Qaeda Relations in the Post Cold-War Period --Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed reposted by 911blogger.com [Full Transcript/Report of the 9/11 Commission Report One Year Later]

What the 9/11 Families are Saying --The Cutting Edge

Close Associate of Mohamed Atta Surfaces in South Pacific --Daniel Hopsicker

Spy Agencies Outsourcing to Fill Key Jobs --LA Times

Trails of a global proliferation network cover-up --Wayne Madsen (Sept. 17-18)

Rumsfeld's Fake News Flop in Iraq --AlterNet (Excerpt from The Best War Ever)

Stealing an election in less than a minute --Princeton University [full report] (Clint Curtis video: always a good watch)

Major Problems At Polls Feared --Washington Post

Round up...

Anthrax victim's widow says government may know who killed husband --Palm Beach Post

9/11 Live or Fabricated: Do the NORAD Tapes Verify the 9/11 Commission Report? --911truth.org (David Ray Griffin)

IAEA: U.S. report on Iran's nuclear plan 'outrageous and dishonest' --Haaretz & Reuters

Novak Accuses Plame Source Of Distortion --The Washington Post

"In an unusual column that appears today, Novak says his initial source, former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage, was more sure of Plame's ties to the CIA than the source has indicated. Novak adds that Armitage linked her directly to her husband's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger and suggested the disclosure would be a good item for Novak's column.

This differs from Armitage's assertions last week that his disclosure was made in an offhand manner and that he did not know why Plame's husband was sent to Niger."

West responsible for extremism: Musharraf --ANI

Bush Tells Barnes Capturing Bin Laden Is 'Not A Top Priority' --Think Progress

Official Touts Nonlethal Weapons for Use --AP

"Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before they are used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday.

Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions in the international community over any possible safety concerns, said Secretary Michael Wynne."

Starving the People To Feed the Cars --The Washington Post (Good to see Lester Brown staying on the ball and spreading the word. I just hope people start waking up. In my opinion, this is one of the biggest obstacles we face in regards to the energy dilemma.)

Ten big news stories you aren't hearing --Market Watch

Round up...

Interrogating 9/11 Fives Years On --New Dawn Magazine (Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed)

Palast Charged with Journalism of the First Degree --Guerrilla News Network (Greg Palast)

Iraqi elections believed to have worsened divisions, report says --McClatchy Newspapers

"Iraq's political process has sharpened the country's sectarian divisions, polarized relations between its ethnic and religious groups, and weakened its sense of national identity, the Government Accountability Office said Monday.

In spite of a sharp increase in Sunni-Shiite violence, however, attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces are still the primary source of bloodshed in Iraq, the report found.

... The report, citing the Pentagon, said that enemy attacks against coalition and Iraqi forces increased by 23 percent from 2004 to 2005 and that the number of attacks from January to July 2006 were 57 percent higher than during the same period in 2005.

A graph showed that the number of attacks rose from around 100 in May 2003 to roughly 4,500 in July 2006."

Sadr Holds Out Against Plan to Divide Iraq --The Washington Post

Monsanto Whistleblower Says Genetically Engineered Crops May Cause Disease --Institute for Responsible Technology

Redesigning Crops to Harvest Fuel --The New York Times

Afghanistan ready to flood Europe with first-grade heroin --RIA Novosti

"God blessed America, and look what we did with it."

Donna Marsh O'Conner...



Full video available here (requires Real Player).

Round up...

Worried CIA Officers Buy Legal Insurance --The Washington Post

"The new enrollments reflect heightened anxiety at the CIA that officers may be vulnerable to accusations they were involved in abuse, torture, human rights violations and other misconduct, including wrongdoing related to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

...One former intelligence official said CIA officers have recently expressed concern that lawsuits will erupt if details of the agency's internal probe of wrongdoing related to the September 2001 attacks become public."

As violence escalates, so does talk of a divided Iraq --Christian Science Monitor

Deal on a Constitution for Iraq Is Teetering --NY Times

The Best War Ever --Sheldon Rampton & John Stauber

Ptech owner making headlines in Turkey, Bosnia

"Prime Ministry insists on al-Qadi’s assets remaining frozen," Turkish Daily News, September 6, 2006:

"The Prime Ministry has appealed a Council of State 10th Bureau decision to suspend a Cabinet resolution freezing the assets of Yasin al-Qadi, a Saudi businessman and reputed al-Qaeda financier on Sept. 1, it was reported on Tuesday.

...The Council of State 10th Bureau had ordered the return of the assets, a decision that was made on technical grounds. Due to the appeal, the case will now go to the Council of State Administrative Cases Council.

...The decision came after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s defense of al-Qadi as a “philanthropist,” for which he was criticized. “I know Yasin and I believe in him as I believe in myself,” Erogan told NTV in an interview on July 11. “It is not possible for him to establish ties with a terrorist organization and support it. … He is a person who has no specialty other than being a philanthropist.”

...The Turkish media has accused Erdogan’s government of blocking an investigation into reported money transfers to al-Qadi in the late ‘90s by one of his top advisors.

The Republican People’s Party (CHP) last week filed a criminal complaint against eight people, including al-Qadi, Erdogan’s advisor Cüneyd Zapsu, Abdulaziz Zapsu, Mustafa Latif Topbas, Mehmet Fatih Sarac, Ibrahim Halit Cizmeci, Wa’el Julaidan and Gaye Zapsu for laundering money and financing terrorism.

The assets of al-Qadi, who heads the Saudi-based Muwafaq Foundation, also were frozen by the European Union. U.S. Treasury officials allege the organization he heads is an al-Qaeda front used to funnel millions of dollars to the global terror organization."

“WEEKLY CLAIMS WARTIME BOSNIAN PRESIDENT LINKED TO AL-QAEDA,” AKI, September 8, 2006:

“Bosnia's wartime president, the late Alija Izetbegovic received money from a Saudi businessman, Yassin al-Kadi - who has been designated by the United States, the United Nations, and the European Union as a financier of al-Qaeda - Sarajevo weekly Slobodna Bosna (Free Bosnia) has reported, quoting local and foreign sources.

Izetbegovic, a Muslim, who died in 2003, received 195,000 dollars in 1996 from al-Kadi, Slobodna Bosna alleges.

The weekly said that Bosnian authorities obtained the information on this transaction from a British bank in the process of investigation of activities of al-Kadi’s humanitarian organisation, Mufavak…

… Izetbegovic led Bosnia to independence from the former Yugoslavia, and thousands of foreign fighters or 'mujahadeen' from Islamic countries came to Bosnia to fight on the side of local Muslims in bloody 1992-1995 civil war. The war effort was partly financed under the cover of 'humanitarian' organisations from Islamic countries, according to intelligence sources. …”

Round up...

Eustis chief: Iraq post-war plan muzzled --The Daily Press

"Months before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists from developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.

In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a post-war plan. ..."

Iraq's Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties Were Disputed Before War --The Washignton Post (Read the two released sections of "Phase II" here. If we are lucky, the rest of the report might be finished before 2020.)

Discover the Secret Right-Wing Network Behind ABC's 9/11 Deception --Huffington Post (Max Blumenthal) (The widespread partisan bickering surrounding this whole fiasco is making me ill, but this article is certainly worth checking out, as it identifies the source of the controversy.)

Where was Osama on September 11, 2001? --Global Research

Round up...

Palast, Pascarella Face Homeland Security Charges --GregPalast.com

Pentagon Spends Billions to Outsource Torture --AlterNet

Documents: Feds, City Knew Of Ground Zero Toxins --WCBS-TV

In the Iraqi war zone, US Army calls for 'green' power --Christian Science Monitor (The depth of irony here is almost humorous.)

US plans to 'fight the net' revealed --BBC

White House Targets Conspiracy Theorists As Terrorist Recruiters --Prison Planet

"Smoking gun" evidence uncovered in Ohio of massive vote fraud in 2004 election --Wayne Madsen

Rep. Jim Cooper: Bush is Hiding the True National Debt. It's Worse than You've Heard. Much Worse. --Buzz Flash

Tax Hunters LTD: Hired Duns Take Over Your Taxes --Dissident Voice

Panel Set to Release Just Part of Report On Run-Up to War --Washington Post (The 'Phase II' cover up continues)

Round up...

Empire of Oil: Capitalist Dispossession and the Scramble for Africa --Monthly Review

Book says CIA tried to provoke Saddam to war --The Guardian

"More than a year before the invasion of Iraq the CIA devised a plan, codenamed Anabasis, to use Iraqi exile fighters to seize an air base and declare a revolt against Saddam Hussein in the hope that his response would create a pretext for war, according to a book published tomorrow.

...the CIA-backed fighters carried out sabotage operations and assassinations of Ba'athist officials in the run-up to the war, the book, called Hubris, reports.

...Planning on Anabasis, which cost $400m (£210m), started at the end of 2001 and was approved by President Bush in February 2002.

...According to the book, the CIA flew 80 former Iraqi soldiers into the US in the summer of 2002, and trained them at an energy department nuclear test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. ..."

Sunnis enraged as Iraq prepares to divide itself into regions --The Telegraph

Scientists See New Global Warming Threat --AP

"New research is raising concerns that global warming may be triggering a self-perpetuating climate time bomb trapped in once-frozen permafrost.

...Scientists are fretting about a global warming vicious cycle that had not been part of their already gloomy climate forecasts: Warming already under way thaws permafrost, soil that had been continuously frozen for thousands of years.

Thawed permafrost releases methane and carbon dioxide. Those gases reach the atmosphere and help trap heat on Earth in the greenhouse effect. The trapped heat thaws more permafrost, and so on.

...Another study earlier this summer in the journal Science found that the amount of carbon trapped in this type of permafrost - called yedoma - is much more prevalent than originally thought and may be 100 times the amount of carbon released into the air each year by the burning of fossil fuels. ..."

Pakistan's Denies Bin Laden Gets a Pass --ABC (The Blotter)

Round up...

(Note: I do not endorse ALL of the conclusions and opinions expressed in the articles posted here each day. These articles are posted because I believe each source presents valuable information and a unique perspective. When it comes to 9/11 research in particular, there is enough room for everybody, including Michael Ruppert, Daniel Hopsicker, Peter Lance, and the '9/11 Truth Movement' as a whole, despite the feuds among them.)

THE 9/11 HEROIN CONNECTION --Daniel Hopsicker

Pakistan signs pact with pro-Taleban militants --Reuters

Pakistan: Osama bin Laden will not be captured if he agrees to live a 'peaceful life' --ABC, Raw Story



Why is President Bush's Brother Hanging Out with an alleged Russian Mobster? --Jazz from Hell

The 9/11 Commission: A Play on Nothing in Three Acts --NSWBC

World War III more likely from oil grabs than radical Islam --Augusta Free Press

Urgent action is needed to avert the looming oil wars --Financial Times (Michael Meacher)

Iraqi Parliament to Debate Federal Break-Up --AFP

What Valerie Plame Really Did at the CIA --The Nation (David Corn)

Round up...

Is TSA's terrorism Watch List being abused to target whistleblowers? --Narco Sphere

"...McLaughlin was shocked. He produced credentials to prove that there could be no way he was on a government Watch List. But that still wasn’t good enough. ... To this day, McLaughlin has not been able to clear up the matter, despite requesting clarification through TSA.

...McLaughlin is a law enforcement officer. And he is not just any cop. He is employed as a narcotic agent assigned to the “Intelligence Unit” of the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office.

...TSA’s response to McLaughlin’s FOIA:

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) can neither confirm or deny whether an individual is on a Federal Watch List, because this information is derived from classified and sensitive law enforcement and intelligence information. ...

...Both attorneys represent McLaughlin in still pending litigation that dates back to the mid-1990s. That litigation stems from a case McLaughlin and his partner, Charles Micewski, worked against a ring of Dominican narco-traffickers.

From a Feb. 13, 2003, Associate Press story:

(AP) (PHILADELPHIA) A jury has sided with two narcotics agents who claimed their boss — the Pennsylvania attorney general — retaliated against them because they uncovered a drug-trafficking ring that diverted profits to a CIA-backed Dominican presidential candidate. ...

Bush Declares Eco-Whistleblower Law Void for EPA Employees --Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)

Other Economies are Possible! --Dollars & Sense

UK Terror Suspects Met With 9/11 Paymaster

Several of those arrested this August in the UK for allegedly plotting to bomb multiple trans-Atlantic flights met with the alleged 9/11 paymaster, Omar Saeed Sheikh, according to a virtually unnoticed August 12, 2006 article by the Indian newspaper, The Hindu.

Prior to the 9/11 attacks, Omar wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, who subsequently distributed the funds to his fellow hijackers in the United States. General Mahmud Ahmed, then head of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, ordered the transfer, as confirmed by Dennis Lormel, director of the FBI's financial crimes unit. Gen. Mahmood was in Washington DC the week of 9/11 for "mysterious meetings" at the Pentagon and National Security Council.

Omar's connections to 9/11 have not been widely reported, but he made headlines in 2002 after being convicted for the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Omar was sentenced to death for Pearl's execution, however his appeal has been adjourned more than thirty times and he remains alive in Pakistani custody.

Several of the suspects now being held in Britain reportedly traveled to Pakistan as earthquake relief workers in 2005 and subsequently met with Omar at a jail in Sindh.

Bahukutumbi Raman, a former high-level counterterrorism official in India, has noted, "Since nobody can meet him (Omar) without the permission of the jail authorities, the latter must have been aware of their meeting with him and what was discussed."

The suspects traveled to Pakistan as members of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD), the parent organization of the Lasktar-e-Toiba (LET), an organization with close ties to Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI.

As Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa has noted, "Lashkar e Taiba, which now operates clandestinely, is one of the main Kashmir rebel groups which had been supported and financed by the ISI, yet, at the same time, it is the ISI which has been entrusted in investigating Lashkar's role in the UK terror plot."

The Lashkar-e-Toiba, or LET, also has reported connections to Western intelligence, as does Omar Saeed Sheikh, the 9/11 paymaster.

According to a 2002 report by Raman, the LET, along with two other groups--the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-Al-Islami (HUJI)--were given the "leadership role" by the CIA during the Afghan jihad of the 1980s.

During the 1990s, some of the remaining HUM militants were sent to fight in Bosnia, while the CIA and the MI6 also began recruiting new jihadists in Britain. Omar, who was attending the London School of Economics at the time, was indoctrinated and became one these new recruits.

In addition to financing the 9/11 attacks, Omar is also believed to have trained the 9/11 terrorists in hijacking techniques.

According to his own account, Omar knew the plans for the 9/11 attacks and had fully informed his superiors at the ISI. As mentioned earlier, not only did the ISI do nothing to prevent the attacks, the head of the ISI, who was in Washington on 9/11, ordered Omar to wire $100,000 to the lead hijacker, Mohammed Atta.

Round up...

US Army Contemplates Redrawing Middle East Map to Stave Off Looming Global Meltdown --Dissident Voice

"Maj. Peters, formerly assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence where he was responsible for future warfare, candidly outlines how the map of the Middle East should be fundamentally re-drawn, in a new imperial endeavor designed to correct past errors. “Without such major boundary revisions, we shall never see a more peaceful Middle East,” he observes, but then adds wryly: “Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works.”

Major Peters, the textbook imperialist, writes:

“Those of us who can sort, digest, synthesize, and apply relevant knowledge soar -- professionally, financially, politically, militarily, and socially. We, the winners, are a minority.” This minority will inevitably conflict with the vast majority of the world’s population. “For the world masses, devastated by information they cannot manage or effectively interpret, life is ‘nasty, brutish ... and short-circuited.’” In “every country and region,” these masses who can neither “understand the new world”, nor “profit from its uncertainties … will become the violent enemies of their inadequate governments, of their more fortunate neighbors, and ultimately of the United States.”

"There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing."

Military source points to peak oil production and climate change, predicts global collapse by 2008:

...According to an American source with high-level access to the US military, political and intelligence establishment, Western policymakers are in no doubt that the world faces the imminent convergence of multiple global crises. These crises threaten not only to undermine the basis of Western power in its current military and geopolitical configurations, but also to destabilize the entire foundations of industrial civilization.

The source said that the latest petroleum data indicates that “global oil production most likely peaked two years ago.”

...The source also said that leading US financial analysts privately believe that “a collapse of the global banking system is imminent by 2008.”

...The source also commented on the danger posed by rapid climate change. Although most conventional estimates suggest that global climate catastrophe is not due before another 30 odd years, he argued that the multiplication of several “tipping-points” suggested that a series of devastating climatic events could be “triggered within the next 10 to 15 years.” ..."

The hungry planet --The Independent

"...Food supplies are shrinking alarmingly around the globe, plunging the world into its greatest crisis for more than 30 years. ..."

The truth about the "Terror Plot"... and the new "pseudo-terrorism" --Online Journal

Al Qaeda in Iraq's No. 2 Reportedly Arrested --LA Times

A List of Captured or Killed Al Qaeda in Iraq #2's --blogenlust.net

First Time Released Documents Expose Subservient Congress --NSBWC

Afghanistan's opium production jumps by nearly 50 percent: UN --AFP

Pentagon gives gloomy Iraq report --AP

Metroland feature on 9/11 Truth

What Really Happened? --Metroland

"...The [Loose Change] group still faces plenty of legitimate criticism. Some argue that they base their assertions on speculations grounded in footage that they harvest from third- and fourth-hand Internet sources that could easily have been altered, or from sources like Wikipedia; they read too much into things that could have been reported in the heat of the moment, critics say, or simply recorded in error.

And yet, some of their most vocal critics also desperately want the group to succeed. Troy resident Patrick Buckley is one of those people. Buckley, like the guys behind Loose Change, was a young man on 9/11 and was gripped by the events and entered into a new sense of reality.

“I was in high school on 9/11. I was in 10th grade,” he explains. “I was completely disconnected from anything—from anything that had to do with politics, social issues, foreign policy. I remember when I saw it, I was in math class, and we saw just after the second tower got hit. The teacher came in late, right after the bell rang, and asked what happened. We pointed out that the two planes hit the towers, and she was just like, ‘I pretend that stuff doesn’t happen,’ and we went on with math class.”

Buckley says he realized that he wasn’t learning the things that really mattered in his high school, like current affairs and politics, so he began trying to understand what led to 9/11. Since then, Buckley has started investigations of his own and plans to run a Web site devoted to investigative journalism.

He notes that three years ago, the guys behind Loose Change would probably have been driven out of the country on a wave of angry patriotism, but that does not mean he agrees with everything they have to say.

“Yes, it helps spread speculation and helps get people to ask questions. But as far as I’m concerned, I would hope they would bring out some of the info that is out there,” Buckley says.

What information is that? The fact that the military was conducting war games the morning of 9/11, games that Buckley and a number of sources claim involved simulations of aircraft being hijacked and slammed into buildings. He says that the inclusion of the Project for a New American Century (a Republican think tank) in Loose Change is extremely important.

Rebuilding America’s Defenses, a document written by the think tank in 2000, pushes for the spread of American militarism and insists that Iraq be invaded as the beginning of a greater plan that would see the United States straddling the globe. The document goes on to assert that the only way to rally American enthusiasm for such change would be another Pearl Harbor-like event. “Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor,” the document declares. A number of members of the current Bush administration endorsed the paper, including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

But Buckley says that there are documents and money trails to be followed. While the Loose Change guys seem to want to bring about an official criminal investigation of 9/11—an investigation they say the government should initiate—Buckley is certain that information about the true causes of 9/11 is out there and available to investigative journalists.

In fact, he says some of that information is available to the American public. He points to coverage by many mainstream news agencies of a Pakistani official, Mahmud Ahmad, who was removed from his position because he had sanctioned the wiring of $100,000 to highjacker Mohammad Atta. Buckley insists there are links between this man and American intelligence, and he points to coverage of a visit Ahmad paid to CIA Director George Tenet during the week of 9/11.

Buckley has approached the filmmakers with evidence like this in hopes that they will include it over evidence that he says is more speculative, like the size of holes left by planes or what may or may not be explosions seen while the towers collapsed.

“I’ve been trying to get this across to them for a while,” says Buckley. “They say they are open to change and want to have the most well-documented film.” ..."

Excellent article, although Mr. King slightly misinterpreted that last quote. I have only spoken to the creators of "Loose Change" once. I was referring to all those who perpetuate the cruise missile theory when I said "I've been trying to get this across to them for a while." When I discussed the issue with the three filmmakers in early August, they seemed to agree that the missile theory was an unlikely scenario. I expect that it will be removed from the final edition and I intend to contact the filmmakers with additional suggestions in the near future.