What amazes me, though, is how many of the Truthers don't realize that LIHOP and MIHOP are mutually contradictory...Stewart replies:
This movie is just as bad as Loose Change; it's a mixture of the usual BS from the Troofers: Quote mining ("Set up to fail"), selective presentation of facts, and bizarre interpretations (Norm Mineta's testimony about a shoot-down order becoming a stand-down order, for example).
My presentation focuses on the "lowest common denominator" evidence of official complicity, which I stated clearly in the video, does not exclude the possibility that some suspects participated in the planning of the attack. But their usual debunker tactic of presenting LIHOP and MIHOP as incompatible simply presents another false excuse to dismiss evidence prior to examination. Notice how all 21 exhibits I presented are simply ignored as "same old Truther BS."Pat's claim that Stewart is quote mining the 9/11 Commissioners, as to suggest that they agree with our case, is the real logical fallacy.
As the Washington Post reported in August 2006:
Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources...Kean admitted they were lied to and he didn't know why, he can think they got it right in the end all he wants, but his comment and many similar ones made by other members of the commission just proves that we need a new investigation that will tie the "loose ends."
"We to this day don't know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us," said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. "It was just so far from the truth. . . . It's one of those loose ends that never got tied."
When viewed in conjunction with the preponderance of evidence supporting a deliberate NORAD stand-down, his statement does support this contention, no matter if cognitive dissonance blinds him to this fact, or whatever the case may be.
As to Pat's second point, here is the Norman Mineta case in a nutshell as previously explained by Stewart on this blog:
According to the testimony of Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, Dick Cheney not only lied about the time he arrived at the PEOC bunker, but he knew for at least 10 minutes beforehand about Flight 77 heading for the Pentagon yet refused to try to warn the Pentagon or intercept the Flight. While debunkers and the mainstream press continue to misquote Mineta, saying he was referring to Flight 93, Mineta has repeatedly clarified he was speaking of Flight 77. Many believe this to be evidence of a "Stand Down" order.
Again, the statements of this very 9/11 commissioner seem to support our argument on the issue and definitely support our overall argument that what is truly bunk is the official 9/11 story. Pat's Jedi nemesis Jon Gold explains:
As we all know, Norman Mineta's testimony was never investigated or mentioned in the 9/11 Report. You would think that the "young man" that was involved in such an important moment during the 9/11 attacks would be named, and brought before the 9/11 Commission. He was not.
This clip is from C-SPAN's 5/26/2005 taping of the "Washington Journal". The caller clearly states that at the time the Pentagon was hit, Cheney was aware of the incoming plane according to Norman Mineta's testimony. At the end of this segment, Lee Hamilton says that Cheney was "in the key position at the time". Prior to that, he said that "the Vice President was in the operation room", and "when the impact did occur." To me, this sounds like Lee Hamilton just confirmed Norman Mineta's testimony.
Gold adds:
Apparently, Lee waited a while before he actually read the report. However, he ADMITS that "we do not really know what the Vice President really did." Newsweek reported that Cheney was picked up by the Secret Service at 9:35, but does write that, "a source close to the commission, who declined to be identified revealing sensitive information, says that none of the staffers who worked on this aspect of the investigation believed Cheney's version of events."Pat states there is "no basis in reality" for believing that if a new investigation proved the LIHOP case correct that it would force the end of the wars and a repeal of the Patriot Act.
Why is this acceptable? Guess what? It's not.
So let me get this straight, proving that the government consciously allowed 9/11 to happen could not force a reexamination and abandonment of the resulting foreign and domestic policy? I fail to see any basis for that. I do agree with Pat however when he states:
"If you accept LIHOP, then that still means there are dangerous terrorists in the world, right?"
Indeed, Debunking the Debunkers blog contributor Scootle Royale previously admitted this in his entry "What I learned from 9/11 debunkers," when he pointed out that:
We should all fear terrorists. 3000 people were killed in major a terrorist attack in 2001, 200 in 2002, 200 in 2004, 50 in 2005, 200 in 2006 and 180 in 2008. That's about 4000 people in 8 years! Terrorism is the greatest threat to the people of this world - not cancer or AIDs or heart disease which kills millions a year, not world poverty which kills 30,000 children a day, not those wars we are fighting in the name of these terrorist attacks which have killed over a million Iraqis since 2003 and tens of thousands of British and American soldiers. Fighting terrorism should be our number one priority.
