Patriots Question 9/11

The Internet Post beleives that there is definately more to the 9-11 story and that there is more truth needed to be brought forward. We are continuing to search for more information supporting our veiwpoint.

Thomas, Cheif Editor

Commander Ralph Kolstad, U.S. Navy (ret) – Retired fighter pilot. Former Air Combat Instructor, U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School (Topgun). 20-year Navy career. Aircraft flown: McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom, Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, and Grumman F-14 Tomcat. Retired commercial airline captain with 27 years experience. Aircraft flown: Boeing 727, 757 and 767, McDonnell Douglas MD-80, and Fokker F-100. 23,000+ total hours flown.
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Statement to this website 8/20/07: "I started questioning the Sept 11, 2001 “story” only days after the event. It just didn't make any sense to me. How could a steel and concrete building collapse after being hit by a Boeing 767? Didn't the engineers design it to withstand a direct hit from a Boeing 707, approximately the same size and weight of the 767? The evidence just didn't add up. ...

At the Pentagon, the pilot of the Boeing 757 did quite a feat of flying. I have 6,000 hours of flight time in Boeing 757’s and 767’s and could not have flown it the way the flight path was described.

I was also a Navy fighter pilot and Air Combat Instructor, U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School and have experience flying low altitude, high speed aircraft. I could not have done what these beginners did. Something stinks to high heaven!

Where is the damage to the wall of the Pentagon from the wings? Where are the big pieces that always break away in an accident? Where is all the luggage? Where are the miles and miles of wire, cable, and lines that are part and parcel of any large aircraft? Where are the steel engine parts? Where is the steel landing gear? Where is the tail section that would have broken into large pieces?

I also personally knew American Airlines Captain “Chick” Burlingame, who was the captain of Flight 77 which allegedly hit the Pentagon, and I know he would not have given up his airplane to crazies!

And at the Shanksville Pennsylvania impact site, where is any of the wreckage?!!! Of all the pictures I have seen, there is only a hole! Where is any piece of a crashed airplane? Why was the area cordoned off, and no inspection allowed by the normal accident personnel? Where is any evidence at all?

When one starts using his own mind, and not what one was told, there is very little to believe in the official “story”. ...

Every question leads to another question that has not been answered by anyone in authority. This is just the beginning as to why I don’t believe the official “story” and why I want the truth to be told." Link to full statement


Member: Pilots for 9/11 Truth Association Statement: "Pilots for 9/11 Truth is an organization of aviation professionals and pilots throughout the globe that have gathered together for one purpose. We are committed to seeking the truth surrounding the events of the 11th of September 2001. Our main focus concentrates on the four flights, maneuvers performed and the reported pilots. We do not offer theory or point blame. However, we are focused on determining the truth of that fateful day since the United States Government doesn't seem to be very forthcoming with answers."

The Folks Who Brought You Iraq

Posted on Mar 20, 2008
By Joe Conason

“Well, that’s history. That’s the past. That’s talking about what happened before. What we should be talking about is what we’re going to do now.”

The man who spoke those words is Sen. John McCain, and the subject was the Iraq war and its origins in official falsehood, strategic error and wishful thinking. Expect to hear him repeat those same dismissive phrases again and again as the presidential campaign unfolds.

Understandably, the presumptive Republican nominee prefers to avoid examining how our finest young people and vast amounts of our national treasure came to be squandered in the Middle Eastern desert, since he was among the war’s most excited advocates.

There were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq (as some of us were not surprised to learn), and in particular, no nuclear weapons under construction as advertised. There were no significant connections between al-Qaida and the regime of Saddam Hussein (as the Pentagon reaffirmed in a recent intelligence analysis). There was no legal basis for an invasion. There was no population inviting us to occupy their country as liberators.

Yes, it’s all “history,” or at least it will be someday, and the historians will properly record McCain’s role in the fiasco with all due asperity. But on the fifth anniversary of the war, it is a little too easy to dismiss everything that led us to this point as “what happened before.”

With the Arizona senator fresh from a congressional trip to Baghdad—where he preened for the photo ops along with two of his campaign co-chairs, Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Sen. Lindsey Graham—this is certainly an appropriate moment to evaluate the judgment of the politicians who have promoted the whole enterprise and the consequences of their decision.

How mistaken were the war’s optimistic promoters in 2003? The official line on the expected cost of rebuilding Iraq after ousting Saddam was just under $2 billion, according to testimony provided by Bush administration officials. That estimate did not include the likelihood, according to Paul Wolfowitz, the then-deputy secretary of defense, of whether Iraq’s oil reserves would cover the entire cost of invasion, occupation and reconstruction. Five years later, the estimated cost of the war to American taxpayers is well over $2 trillion, including the care we must provide for wounded Americans over the next few decades. Much of the Iraqi oil, of which production remains sporadic, is being stolen and smuggled away.

The difference between an estimate of $2 billion and a cost of $2 trillion could be considered a significant miscalculation, even in a Republican government.

Yet those figures don’t quite reckon with the real costs, which should include the rise in the price of oil from around $36 a barrel in March 2003 to well over $100 a barrel this month. Some economists go further, blaming the subprime mortgage collapse—and the ensuing deluge of bad paper that may capsize the world economy—on the effects of the war.

What did we get for all our money and blood? What diplomatic and strategic achievements can we attribute to the war? The conflict over Israel and Palestine has grown more intractable, with the rising influence of Hamas and Hezbollah. The influence of Iran, an avowed enemy of the United States, has risen across the region and penetrated deep into Iraq, where our occupation props up Tehran’s allies. The United States military has been badly depleted and demoralized, while our global prestige has dropped.

Still, McCain tells us—and reportedly assured the Iraqi prime minister—of his intentions if elected president. “What we’re going to do now is continue this strategy,” he said, “which is succeeding in Iraq and we are carrying out the goals of the surge ... .”

The announced aim of last year’s troop escalation was to create sufficient stability in Iraq to permit the Shia, Kurds, Sunni and other political leaders to consolidate a government, provide decent public services and begin reconciliation. Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces there, has acknowledged that the progress toward those objectives is far from satisfactory. Based on the originally stated purpose, the surge isn’t succeeding. Predictably, the level of violence in Iraq is rising again, with the daily death toll in March so far doubled from its low point in January.

It is telling when a presidential candidate speaks so dismissively of history and urges us to ignore “what happened before.” In this instance, it is a sign of bad faith and worse judgment.

Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer.

Jobless claims jump by 22,000

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer


The number of newly laid off workers filing for unemployment benefits rose last week to the highest level in nearly two months, providing more evidence that the weak economy is having an adverse impact on the labor market.

The Labor Department said Thursday that applications for jobless benefits totaled 378,000 last week. That was an increase of 22,000 from the previous week and was a far bigger jump than had been expected.

The four-week average for new claims rose to 365,250, which was the highest level since a flood of claims caused by the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes.

The right to own handguns

An unambiguous right

By Herbert W. Titus and William J. Olson


Compelled to take up arms to regain their liberties as Englishmen, America's Founders knew that even the constitutional republic they had established could threaten the freedoms for which they had fought. In the First Amendment, they established a first line of defense — the freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition.


Knowing that words and parchment barriers alone would prove inadequate to restrain those elected as servants from becoming tyrants, they added the Second Amendment to secure "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms" — not to protect deer hunters and skeet shooters, but to guarantee to themselves and their posterity the blessings of "a free State."


Their foremost concern was the precipitating events of the American Revolution, wherein British troops in Massachusetts and Virginia seized American muskets, cannon and powder — actions the Declaration of Independence calls "a design to reduce (the colonists) under absolute Despotism."


Entrusting the nation's sovereignty to the people, the amendment breaks the government's military monopoly, guaranteeing to the people such firearms as would be necessary to defend against the sort of government abuse of their inalienable rights the British had committed.


Thus, the amendment's "well regulated Militia" encompasses all citizens who constitute the polity of the nation with the right to form their own government. The amendment's "keep and bear Arms" secures the right to possess firearms such as fully-automatic rifles, which are both the "lineal descendant(s) of … founding-era weapon(s)" (applying a 2007 court of appeals' test), and "ordinary military equipment" (applying a 1939 Supreme Court standard).


No government deprives its citizens of rights without asserting that its actions are "reasonable" and "necessary" for high-sounding reasons such as "public safety." A right that can be regulated is no right at all, only a temporary privilege dependent upon the good will of the very government officials that such right is designed to constrain.


Herbert W. Titus and William J. Olson are attorneys for Gun Owners of America, which filed a brief in the Second Amendment case the Supreme Court heard Tuesday.

Bush’s Legacy of Failure

By Robert Scheer

That idiotic “what me worry?” look just never leaves the man’s visage. Once again there was our president, presiding over disasters in part of his making and totally on his watch, grinning with an aplomb that suggested a serious disconnect between his worldview and existing reality. Be it in his announcement that Iraq was being secured on a day when bombs ripped through that sad land or posed between his treasury secretary and the Federal Reserve chairman to applaud the government’s bailout of a failed bank, George Bush was the only one inexplicably smiling.

Failure suits him. It is a stance he learned well while presiding over one failed Texas business deal after another, and it served him splendidly as he claimed the title of president of the United States after losing the popular, and maybe even the electoral, vote. It carried him through the most ignominious chapter of U.S. foreign policy, from the lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction to an unprecedented presidential defense of torture.

The totally unwarranted assurance was there this week as the once proud dollar fell into the toilet and the debacle of Iraq and Bush’s other failed Mideast policies pushed oil prices to record highs. The Europeans, who didn’t support the U.S. imperial intervention, are doing much better, not having to pay for guarding besieged oil pipelines while U.S. taxpayers are saddled with trillions in future debt, not to mention 4,000 U.S. military deaths and 30,000 U.S. injuries in a war the administration had promised would be paid for with Iraqi oil revenues. Even in Baghdad last week there wasn’t enough oil to keep the lights on for more than a few hours.

But the president is happy because his legacy issue, the war on terror, is intact. No matter that this week the Pentagon was forced to release a report conducted over the last five years that concluded, after surveying 600,000 official Iraqi documents captured by U.S. forces, that there is “no smoking gun” establishing any connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. The report was so embarrassing that we taxpayers who paid for it were not going to be told of its existence, even though the explosive conclusions were totally declassified, until ABC News forced its posting online.

The network reported that the Pentagon had canceled plans to issue a press release or make it available by e-mail or otherwise online because, as one Pentagon official put it, the study is “too politically sensitive.” Damn right it is—Bush squandered U.S. treasure and lives in an effort that had nothing to do with the infamous attack on America. As for the real war on terror against the real al-Qaida, those folks are very much on the rebound, just where they were before the 9/11 attack, building their bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Meanwhile, back on the home front, Wall Street is crumbling, not because of planes crashing into buildings but because the outrageous knaves of finance, freed from the most minimal requirements of public accountability, have been permitted to destroy America’s reputation in the world for financial probity.

In the name of ending what were claimed to be onerous regulations imposed after the Great Depression, this administration accelerated a bipartisan pattern of allowing Wall Street to betray investors with impunity while abandoning the federal government’s obligation, once accepted equally by conservatives and liberals, to ensure our national solvency. This tendency, under way for decades to give the bankers what they wanted—codified in the Financial Services Modernization Act, which was signed into law by Bill Clinton and which permitted banks, stock brokers and insurance companies to merge—was exacerbated by Bush’s appointment of rapacious corporate foxes to watch the corporate henhouse.

They will take care of their own, which is why Bush was smiling, happily posed in that photo op between Henry Paulson Jr. and Ben Bernanke announcing the Bear Stearns bailout, made possible only by the federal government using your tax dollars to pick up the bad debt of the banks. Tape that picture to your wall to remind you, when you open a credit card bill with a 30 percent interest rate—not the 2 percent the Fed will charge banks—or see the increase in your adjustable rate mortgage, of just what your government will do for the really big guys that it will never do for regular folks.

In the years to come, as millions lose their retirement income and homes, we will have occasion to remember Georgie Porgie, who kissed the taxpayers and made them cry before he ran away.

McCain’s Militant Mixup

And this guy wants to be president??????????


McCain’s Militant Mixup

Posted on Mar 19, 2008

Presidential contender John McCain took a trip to the Middle East to showcase his foreign policy chops, so the opposition was particularly delighted that it was during such a demonstration that he committed this gaffe.

While attempting to explain Iran’s influence in neighboring Iraq, the would-be commander in chief repeatedly refers to Tehran’s support for al-Qaida. Iran is a Shiite country that has been accused of arming Shiite militants, and not the militantly Sunni al-Qaida.

China Renewable Energy and Sustainable Development Report: February 2008

China Renewable Energy and Sustainable Development Report: February 2008

As China's appetite for energy continues to grow, so too does its implementation of renewable energy. The country's wind, biomass and solar industries are moving at an impressive pace -- officials are planning to generate roughly 120,000 megawatts (MW) from renewable resources by 2020.

The monthly China Renewable Energy and Sustainable Development Report (below) from China Strategies, LLC covers the latest political, financial and technological developments in China's rapidly growing renewable energy industries. The report examines the month's activities for policy makers, non-governmental organizations, companies doing business in China, and other interested parties.

In the February edition of the China Report, author Lou Schwartz writes about China's State Electricity Regulatory Commission releasing documents the extent of disruption that the weather disaster of January and February 2008 caused as well as a look at the status of the various renewable energy industries in the country.

Lou Schwartz, president of China Strategies, LLC, and publisher of China Renewable Energy and Sustainable Development Report, earned degrees in East Asian Studies from the University of Michigan and Harvard University where he studied Chinese language and literature, economics and law, among other disciplines. Lou also earned a J.D. from George Washington University Law School. Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Lou has worked on various matters involving China's legal system, economic development, trade and investment while with a large U.S. law firm and currently as President of China Strategies, LLC.

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