Talk:September 11 attacks/Archive 8

message: The latest edit changed the name of "Seven World Trade Center" to "World Trade Center Seven"; I'm pretty sure this is inaccurate, as nearly all references I see for the WTC complex buildings have the number before the letters.  1WTC, 2WTC, 7WTC, etc.  If the editor (User:Milk) can justify this change, please do.  In fact, the editor should notice that the exact paragraph he edited has the phrase "One and Two World Trade Center."  Should 7WTC be treated differently because it wasn't technically part of the WTC development? --Golbez 04:59, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Naming of 7WTC

message: Why the hell are we using MEMRI as a source? They are obviously heavily biased against Arabs and Muslims, and could almost be considered a hate group.
If there *are* any other sources for the same information that come from groups besides, say, FLAME or any other sort of thinktank-like organization (whether it is pro-israeli or pro-arab), then I'd not object to its use here.
But MEMRI? Come on, people.
--68.110.71.34 18:12, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  MEMRI 

message: Something I wonder about is how other, ordinary Americans would have reacted if they were President of the United States on 9/11?  Say what you want about Bush, and I can say quite a bit.  But there are a lot of people on this Earth who should thank whatever deity they worship that I was not President of the United States on 9/11.  My response would have been Biblical in proportions.  It would have been the stuff of legends.  Osama bin Laden most certainly would not be free by now.  Some nations would probably only be a memory.  And I would not have cared what the rest of the world thought of my actions.  That's how mad I was on September 11th.  It scares me to think of what I would have done if I were in Bush's position.  You think Bush is a reckless cowboy, just consider what oridinary Americans, myself included, would have done in his shoes.  What would you have done?
:JesseG 02:46, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right in many ways (though this is nothing to do with the article). I don't know what I would have done. However it disturbs me that what was actually done (among other things) was to continue sitting reading a children's book for several minutes after being told about the attacks. DJ Clayworth 15:53, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: If You Were President on 9/11?

message: I find the article to have many moments that are worded from a perspective of the US and it's allies in a tone that is for an audience of the US and it's allies.
Examples:
Earlier revelations</br>
... The setting of that open-ended standard was treated as a refusal based on sympathy with and dependence on Al Qaida, and a coalition led by the United States launched an invasion of Afghanistan on October 7.
I am concerned that this could be interpreted as meaning the world community held that opinion by someone reading it some considerable time removed from now. I feel we must make sure this doesn't sound like the world was against the Taliban or Al-Qaeda, but the U.S. & the majority of the U.N. at this time.
Effects</br>
...As well as the invasion of Afghanistan, claims of a strong link between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and the argument that the attack demonstrated the need to preemptively strike at forces hostile to US and western interests, were used by the US Administration as justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and although prior to the 9/11 attacks it was conventional wisdom that such links existed, the issue was hotly questioned afterwards. The official panel investigating the attacks reported that, while contacts were made, it had found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda
There is not enough clarity that the inferred relationship between Iraq & the hijaackers was held mainly by the US and future coalition partners.
Also calling the acts terrorists without qualifying that term as being the US & it's allies' perspective infers that the world-at-large considered it a terrorist attack. There are many people that view the attack as terrifying, but can understand the view from the attackers that it was an unconventional attack in a war they declared. By not being careful in stating it is the US & Allies' view we run the risk of misrepresenting the act.
Duemellon
::I think that the attack was viewed by most countries and people as terrorist - Nethertheless, we should clarify that it is "widely regarded as terrorist". WhisperToMe 17:56, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: However, whether it was popularly regarded as a terrorist attack or not, the terminology of calling it "terrorist" implies a degree of depravity, wickedness, and unwarranted cruelty. I feel that calling it  "terrorist" without further qualification of perspective, doees a great disservice to the global minority who refer to it as a revolt, revenge, or an act of war. In other words: An opinion held by the majority is still an opinion. So statements referring to it as "terrorist" without qualification of who's perspective it is, associates an opinion. I think the word "terrorist" Needs to be plastered throughout this article, but it needs to be qualified as a perspective. --Duemellon 12:01, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

text: I certainly agree with the need to create a more NPOV.  I removed the part claiming that the Iraq-Al Quaeda link was conventional wisdom, and am also a little disturbed by the tone of the Arab/Muslim reaction segment.  Perhaps it would be best to flesh out those parts in more neutral wording, I don't think anyone would be against it as long as there isn't a tendency to slant things the other way. Yitzhak 02:53, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  US/Eurocentric Article Pieces 

message: What I'm missing here is the briefing the president received on august 6th called 'Osama bin Ladin determined to strike US" Why does the text so far doesn't mention anything about the risk Al-Qaida was to US security? Why doesn't the text mentions anything about failures of the CIA and FBI? Maybe I overlooked something? A source for  the august 6th briefing can be found here. Bontenbal 08:59, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  august 6th presidential briefing and CIA failures 

message: Learning from the September 11 Attacks
By Mark Weber - September 15, 2001 
With thousands of victims and riveting images of death and destruction, war has come home to America with terrible, devastating suddenness. Together with our fellow citizens, we mourn the many victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon building. But beyond the feelings of grief and fury must come clarity and understanding.
President George W. Bush said on national television that "America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world." The next day he said that "freedom and democracy are under attack," and that the perpetrators had struck against "all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world."
But if "democracy" and "freedom-loving people" are the targets, why isn't anyone attacking Switzerland, Japan or Norway? Bush's claims are just as untrue as President Wilson's World War I declaration that the United States was fighting to "make the world safe for democracy," and President Roosevelt's World War II assurances that the U.S. was fighting for "freedom" and "democracy."
In the wake of the September 11 attacks, speculation has been rife about who the perpetrators may have been. That itself is an acknowledgment that so many people hate this country so intensely that one cannot easily determine just who may have mounted these well-organized attacks of suicidal desperation.
These shocking attacks were predictable. In 1993 Islamic radicals set off a bomb at the World Trade Center that claimed six lives. In August 1998 the United States carried out missile attacks against Afghanistan and Sudan, strikes that senior Clinton administration officials said signaled the start of "a real war against terrorism." In the wake of those attacks, a high-ranking U.S. intelligence official warned that "the prospect of retaliation against Americans is very, very high.'" (The Washington Post, Aug. 21, 1998, p. A1)
Our political leaders and the American mass media promote the preposterous fiction that the September 11 attacks are entirely unprovoked and unrelated to United States actions. They want everyone to believe that the underlying hatred of America by so many around the world, especially in Arab and Muslim countries, that motivated the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks is unrelated to this country's policies. It is clear, however, that those who carried out these devastating suicide attacks against centers of American financial and military might were enraged by this country's decades-long support for Israel and its policies of aggression, murderous repression, and brutal occupation against Arabs and Muslims, and/or American air strikes and economic warfare against Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq and Iran.
America is the only country that claims the right to deploy troops and war planes in any corner of the globe in pursuit of what our political leaders call "vital national interests." George Washington and our country's other founders earnestly warned against such imperial arrogance, while far-sighted Americans such as Harry Elmer Barnes, Garet Garrett and Pat Buchanan voiced similar concerns in the 20th century.
For most Americans modern war has largely been an abstraction -- something that happens only in far-away lands. The victims of U.S. air attack and bombardment in Vietnam, Lebanon, Sudan, Libya, Iraq and Serbia have seemed somehow unreal. Few ordinary Americans pay attention, because U.S. military actions normally have little impact on their day-to-day lives.
Just as residents of Rome in the second century hardly noticed the battles fought by their troops on the outer edges of the Roman empire, residents of Seattle and Cleveland today barely concern themselves with the devastation wrought by American troops and warplanes in, for example, Iraq.
Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General, has accused the United States of committing "a crime against humanity" against the people of Iraq "that exceeds all others in its magnitude, cruelty and portent." Citing United Nations agency reports and his own on-site investigations, Clark charged in 1996 that the scarcity of food and medicine as a result of sanctions against Iraq imposed by the United States since 1990, and U.S. bombings of the country, had caused the deaths of more than a million people, including more than half a million children.
Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State in President Clinton's administration, defended the mass killings. During a 1996 interview she was asked: "We have heard that half a million children have died [as a result of sanctions against Iraq]. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima ... Is the price worth it?" Albright replied: "... We think the price is worth it." (60 Minutes, May 12, 1996).
President Bush is now pledging a "crusade," a "war against terrorism" and a "sustained campaign" to "eradicate the evil of terrorism."
But such calls sound hollow given the U.S. government's own record of support for terrorism, for example during the Vietnam war. During the 1980s, the U.S. supported "terrorists" in Afghanistan -- including Osama bin Laden, now the "prime suspect" in the September 11 attacks -- in their struggle to drive out the Soviet invaders.
American presidents have warmly welcomed to the White House Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, two Israeli prime ministers with well-documented records as terrorists. President Bush himself has welcomed to Washington Israel's current prime minister, Ariel Sharon, whose forces have been carrying out assassinations of Palestinian leaders and murderous "retaliatory" strikes against Palestinians. Even an official Israeli commission found that Sharon bore some responsibility for the 1982 massacres of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.
Jewish and Zionist leaders, and their American servants, have predictably lost no time exploiting the September 11 attacks to further their own interests. Taking advantage of the current national mood of blind rage and revenge, they demand new U.S. military action against Israel's many enemies.
In the weeks to come, therefore, we can expect the U.S. government, supported by an enraged public, to lash out violently. The great danger is that an emotion-driven, reactive response will aggravate underlying tensions and encourage new acts of murderous violence.
What is needed now is not a vengeful "crusade," but coherent, reasoned policies based on sanity and justice.
In the months and years ahead, most Americans will doubtless continue to accept what their political leaders and the mass media tell them.
But the jolting impact of the September 11 attacks -- which have, for the first time, brought to our cities the terror and devastation of attacks from the sky -- will also encourage growing numbers of thoughtful Americans to see through the lies propagated by our nation's political and cultural elite, and its Zionist allies, to impose their will around the world. More and more people will understand that their government's overseas policies inevitably have consequences even here at home.
In 1948, as the Zionist state was being established in Palestine, U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, along with nearly every other high-level U.S. foreign affairs specialist, warned that American support for Israel would have dire long-term consequences. Events have fully vindicated their concerns.
Over the long run, the September 11 attacks will encourage public awareness of our government's imperial role in the world, including a sobering reassessment of this country's perverse "special relationship" with the Jewish ethnostate. Along with that, rage will grow against those who have subordinated American interests, and basic justice and humanity, to Jewish-Zionist ambitions.
For more than 20 years the IHR has sought, through its educational work, to prevent precisely such horrors as the attacks in New York and Washington. In the years ahead, as we continue our mission of promoting greater public awareness of history and world affairs, and a greater sense of public responsibility for the policies that generated the rage behind the September 11 attacks, this work will be more important than ever.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Published in The Journal of Historical Review, July-August 2001 (Vol. 20, No. 4), pages 8-9. (This essay has been circulated worldwide, in English, German and Arabic, in print and on numerous websites.)
---
Bah, it's POV. We at Wikipedia use NPOV. Oh, and Al-Qaida has targeted places in France, Singapore, and many other countries. WhisperToMe 21:57, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: What the article leaves out....THE WHOLE TRUTH!

message: User:Xed tries to put that Congo Civil War phrase in this article. I feel that all the sentence is doing is marginalizing September 11 in a POV manner. WhisperToMe 20:39, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The Congo Civil War was going on at the same time as the attacks, and was perhaps the most fatal event of the time period.  Therefore its an important piece of information which puts  the Sept 11 attacks into a global context.--Xed 21:01, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: Also, that's three million people from 1988 to nowadays. September 11 unfolded within one day. WhisperToMe 21:16, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: 1998, not 88. Your ignorance is baffling. 3 million people have died in the Congo Civil War. That's over over 1000 dead per day over 6 years. 3000 dead is very, very minor compared to that. The Congo Civil War is equivalent in casualty figures to a thousand 9/11s--Xed 21:55, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: Agreed.  Also, this was not within the context of a war. The Congo Civil war is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. - Loweeel 21:18, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The war was going on at the same time--Xed 21:55, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Doesn't matter. A lot of things went on at the same time that had nothing to do with 9/11. WhisperToMe 21:56, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: 1998, not 88. Your ignorance is baffling. 3 million people have died in the Congo Civil War and it was the most fatal war of the period. That's over over 1000 dead per day over 6 years. 3000 dead is very, very minor compared to that. The Congo Civil War is equivalent in casualty figures to a thousand 9/11s. Only the worst type of Ugly American would not want it mentioned--Xed 21:55, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: What does this have to do with an attack on America? Why are you comparing a single attack to a war? What you are trying to insert adds nothing to the article.  - Tεxτurε 22:16, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: Hm, you are right about it being 1998, Xed. Still, that doesn't matter in this argument. The phrase doesn't belong there. WhisperToMe 22:29, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Congo Civil War