Posted on 12/17/2015 3:58:25 PM PST by Kaslin
Why does Donald Trump repeat talking points that he knows are untrue? During Tuesday night's debate, The Donald asserted that before 9/11, terrorists put their "friends, family, girlfriends" into planes, and "they were sent back -- for the most part to Saudi Arabia. They knew what was going on. They went home, and they wanted to watch their boyfriends on television."
Trump made similar claims -- but that the 9/11 terrorists sent back their wives -- earlier this month. Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler shredded the claim. Only two of the terrorists were married, Kessler reported, and neither wife had been in the United States. The German girlfriend of one terrorist visited America, but she flew home months before the attack, of which she was unaware.
It speaks volumes about Trump's character (or lack thereof) that rather than drop the bogus 9/11 claim, he edits it in a way that corrects one error -- from wives to girlfriends -- but remains totally false and utterly scurrilous. What does he get out of saying things that are patently untrue? It makes you wonder whether his goal is to lower the bar so that the next time he belches out a whopper, his groupies will just shrug and say it's Trump being Trump. As if that's a good thing.
What he gets: If Trump backs out of his pledge not to run as a third-party candidate, then he'll have cover because he can claim that only a chump would believe he meant what he said.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie stuck to a false narrative with introductory remarks on the one-day closing of Los Angeles schools. "Think about the effect that that's going to have on those children when they go back to school tomorrow, wondering, filled with anxiety about whether they're really going to be safe," quoth Christie. "Think about the mothers who will take those children tomorrow morning to the bus stop wondering whether their children will arrive back on that bus safe and sound."
He knew it was false; by the time the Las Vegas prime-time TV debate began, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti had disclosed that the threat made on the schools was a hoax. It was a hoax that disabled Los Angeles but did not gull cooler heads in New York.
I like Christie. I see his appeal as a governor during scary times and as a former federal prosecutor who put away terrorists plotting on American soil. Still, it bothers me that the Jersey guy doesn't know when not to play the terrorism card. He should have known better than to address the Los Angeles scare as anything but a prank. He was giving too much credence to a false alarm. It's counterproductive.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was the only candidate to get under Trump's skin. Bush asked the billionaire how he expected to handle Vladimir Putin if he couldn't keep his cool about his CNN coverage. Trump -- inaccurately, of course -- threw back his poll numbers at Bush. "I'm at 42 (percent), and you're at 3," Trump sputtered. For the record, the RealClearPolitics average shows Trump at 33 percent and Bush at 4 percent. If Trump had not ruled out a third-party run if he is not the GOP candidate, that little outburst would have led debate news.
I don’t know if it is true or untrue. I just think voters care about other issues. In general, yea, we should care about honesty as a matter of character. But the claim that Muslims were celebrating was claimed to be a lie when most of us saw that on the news. We also recently read about the Muslims from Turkey at that soccer game who shouted “Allah Akbar” during a moment of silence in memory of the Paris victims. So, the wives and kids back on airplanes may or may not be true. Who do you trust with there is a real effort to paint roses on these murder scenes and to deny there is even a problem?
Can I keep my doctor?
In secret.
Only found out after they were gone.
Read
So much for her credibility.
That is her privilege. Just as it is yours not to like him
ouch!
Ask Obama.
Inside the Saudi 9/11 coverup
By Paul Sperry
New York Post
December 15, 2013 | 5:13am
After the 9/11 attacks, the public was told al Qaeda acted alone, with no state sponsors.
But the White House never let it see an entire section of Congress’ investigative report on 9/11 dealing with “specific sources of foreign support†for the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals.
It was kept secret and remains so today.
President Bush inexplicably censored 28 full pages of the 800-page report. Text isn’t just blacked-out here and there in this critical-yet-missing middle section. The pages are completely blank, except for dotted lines where an estimated 7,200 words once stood (this story by comparison is about 1,000 words).
A pair of lawmakers who recently read the redacted portion say they are “absolutely shocked†at the level of foreign state involvement in the attacks.
Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) can’t reveal the nation identified by it without violating federal law. So they’ve proposed Congress pass a resolution asking President Obama to declassify the entire 2002 report, “Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.â€
Some information already has leaked from the classified section, which is based on both CIA and FBI documents, and it points back to Saudi Arabia, a presumed ally.
The Saudis deny any role in 9/11, but the CIA in one memo reportedly found “incontrovertible evidence†that Saudi government officials — not just wealthy Saudi hardliners, but high-level diplomats and intelligence officers employed by the kingdom — helped the hijackers both financially and logistically. The intelligence files cited in the report directly implicate the Saudi embassy in Washington and consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks, making 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war.
The findings, if confirmed, would back up open-source reporting showing the hijackers had, at a minimum, ties to several Saudi officials and agents while they were preparing for their attacks inside the United States. In fact, they got help from Saudi VIPs from coast to coast:
LOS ANGELES: Saudi consulate official Fahad al-Thumairy allegedly arranged for an advance team to receive two of the Saudi hijackers — Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi — as they arrived at LAX in 2000. One of the advance men, Omar al-Bayoumi, a suspected Saudi intelligence agent, left the LA consulate and met the hijackers at a local restaurant. (Bayoumi left the United States two months before the attacks, while Thumairy was deported back to Saudi Arabia after 9/11.)
SAN DIEGO: Bayoumi and another suspected Saudi agent, Osama Bassnan, set up essentially a forward operating base in San Diego for the hijackers after leaving LA. They were provided rooms, rent and phones, as well as private meetings with an American al Qaeda cleric who would later become notorious, Anwar al-Awlaki, at a Saudi-funded mosque he ran in a nearby suburb. They were also feted at a welcoming party. (Bassnan also fled the United States just before the attacks.)
WASHINGTON: Then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar and his wife sent checks totaling some $130,000 to Bassnan while he was handling the hijackers. Though the Bandars claim the checks were “welfare†for Bassnan’s supposedly ill wife, the money nonetheless made its way into the hijackers’ hands.
Other al Qaeda funding was traced back to Bandar and his embassy — so much so that by 2004 Riggs Bank of Washington had dropped the Saudis as a client.
The next year, as a number of embassy employees popped up in terror probes, Riyadh recalled Bandar.
“Our investigations contributed to the ambassador’s departure,†an investigator who worked with the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Washington told me, though Bandar says he left for “personal reasons.â€
FALLS CHURCH, VA.: In 2001, Awlaki and the San Diego hijackers turned up together again — this time at the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, a Pentagon-area mosque built with funds from the Saudi Embassy. Awlaki was recruited 3,000 miles away to head the mosque. As its imam, Awlaki helped the hijackers, who showed up at his doorstep as if on cue. He tasked a handler to help them acquire apartments and IDs before they attacked the Pentagon.
Awlaki worked closely with the Saudi Embassy. He lectured at a Saudi Islamic think tank in Merrifield, Va., chaired by Bandar. Saudi travel itinerary documents I’ve obtained show he also served as the Âofficial imam on Saudi Embassy-sponsored trips to Mecca and tours of Saudi holy sites.
Most suspiciously, though, Awlaki fled the United States on a Saudi jet about a year after 9/11.
As I first reported in my book, “Infiltration,†quoting from classified US documents, the Saudi-sponsored cleric was briefly detained at JFK before being released into the custody of a “Saudi representative.†A federal warrant for Awlaki’s arrest had mysteriously been withdrawn the previous day. A US drone killed Awlaki in Yemen in 2011.
HERNDON, VA.: On the eve of the attacks, top Saudi government official Saleh Hussayen checked into the same Marriott Residence Inn near Dulles Airport as three of the Saudi hijackers who targeted the Pentagon. Hussayen had left a nearby hotel to move into the hijackers’ hotel. Did he meet with them? The FBI never found out. They let him go after he “feigned a seizure,†one agent recalled. (Hussayen’s name doesn’t appear in the separate 9/11 Commission Report, which clears the Saudis.)
SARASOTA, FLA.: 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and other hijackers visited a home owned by Esam Ghazzawi, a Saudi adviser to the nephew of King Fahd. FBI agents investigating the connection in 2002 found that visitor logs for the gated community and photos of license tags matched vehicles driven by the hijackers. Just two weeks before the 9/11 attacks, the Saudi luxury home was abandoned. Three cars, including a new Chrysler PT Cruiser, were left in the driveway. Inside, opulent furniture was untouched.
Democrat Bob Graham, the former Florida senator who chaired the Joint Inquiry, has asked the FBI for the Sarasota case files, but can’t get a single, even heavily redacted, page released. He says it’s a “coverup.â€
Is the federal government protecting the Saudis? Case agents tell me they were repeatedly called off pursuing 9/11 leads back to the Saudi Embassy, which had curious sway over White House and FBI responses to the attacks.
Just days after Bush met with the Saudi ambassador in the White House, the FBI evacuated from the United States dozens of Saudi officials, as well as Osama bin Laden family members. Bandar made the request for escorts directly to FBI headquarters on Sept. 13, 2001 — just hours after he met with the president. The two old family friends shared cigars on the Truman Balcony while discussing the attacks.
Bill Doyle, who lost his son in the World Trade Center attacks and heads the Coalition of 9/11 Families, calls the suppression of Saudi evidence a “coverup beyond belief.†Last week, he sent out an e-mail to relatives urging them to phone their representatives in Congress to support the resolution and read for themselves the censored 28 pages.
Astonishing as that sounds, few lawmakers in fact have bothered to read the classified section of arguably the most important investigation in US history.
Granted, it’s not easy to do. It took a monthlong letter-writing campaign by Jones and Lynch to convince the House intelligence panel to give them access to the material.
But it’s critical they take the time to read it and pressure the White House to let all Americans read it. This isn’t water under the bridge. The information is still relevant Âtoday. Pursuing leads further, getting to the bottom of the foreign support, could help head off another 9/11.
As the frustrated Joint Inquiry authors warned, in an overlooked addendum to their heavily redacted 2002 report, “State-sponsored terrorism substantially increases the likelihood of successful and more Âlethal attacks within the United States.â€
Their findings must be released, even if they forever change US-Saudi relations. If an oil-rich foreign power was capable of orchestrating simultaneous bulls-eye hits on our centers of commerce and defense a dozen years ago, it may be able to pull off similarly devastating attacks today.
Members of Congress reluctant to read the full report ought to remember that the 9/11 assault missed its fourth target: them.
Thanks for posting info about the 28 pages. It is a 14 year coverup by our own government by both Bush and Obama. One has to wonder just what connections there are among the elites that would have them go to such extremes to hide the perpetrators of such an atrocity. The truth must be very ugly indeed.
Just damn. Thanks for posting that.
The can read it on the House floor and can not be punished for it. Of course they can always have an accident.
We elect seemingly good people that become totally corrupt within weeks of taking office. The first black republican women was elected to the House and before she took office she bonded with Boehner.
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