Stephanie Pelley English 12 P.

1 4/19/13

Fahrenheit 9/11: Research Discussion

Ties Between the Bush Family and Osama bin Laden

http://archive.truthout.org/article/ties-between-bush-family-and-osama-bin-laden

New York - Now that the U.S. Congress is investigating the truth of President George W. Bush's statements about the Iraq war, they might look into one of his most startling assertions: that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

Critics dismissed that as an invention. They were wrong. There was a link, but not the one Bush was selling. The link between Hussein and Bin Laden was their banker, BCCI. But the link went beyond the dictator and the jihadist - it passed through Saudi Arabia and stretched all the way to George W. Bush and his father.

BCCI was the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a dirty offshore bank that then-president Ronald Reagan's Central Intelligence Agency used to run guns to Hussein, finance Osama bin Laden, move money in the illegal Iran-Contra operation and carry out other "agency" black ops. The Bushes also benefited privately; one of the bank's largest Saudi investors helped bail out George W. Bush's troubled oil investments.

BCCI was founded in 1972 by a Pakistani banker, Agha Hasan Abedi, with the support of Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan, ruler of Abu Dhabi and head of the United Arab Emirates. Its corporate strategy was money laundering. It became the banker for drug and arms traffickers, corrupt officials, financial fraudsters, dictators and terrorists.

9/11 Truth http://www.truthmove.org/content/9-11-truth/

The Truth Movement is much larger than 9/11 Truth. At the same time, 9/11 is one of the most effective single issues we have. 9/11 is a recent event that we all experienced personally, in one way or another. It is also probably the most world-changing event of our time. 9/11 has been used to justify the reshaping of our world in very ominous ways preemptive wars, imperialism, torture, the stripping away of civil rights and the criminalization of dissent. Understanding 9/11 should be important to everyone. It is not an easy thing to believe that our government could or would deceive us on such a scale. The concept of government complicity points to a lot of other disturbing possibilities, such as:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Our government may kill us to further their agenda. The world media function as a propaganda machine and perpetuate big lies. Commonly accepted reality and history are full of lies and deceptions. Our government is run by terrorists and it is they who hate our freedom. The responsibility for changing this state of affairs lies on our shoulders, personally.

Eleven pieces of evidence you should know about:

Over the course of attacks, more than an hour and a half, NORAD air defense failed to intercept any of the hijacked aircraft. Fighter jets are stationed at bases throughout the US, often on 5 minute alert to be scrambled and respond to domestic air emergencies. This failure was due to unexplained delays in reporting and responding, between the command authority, FAA, and military. Several war games and drills were being conducted on 9/11, including mock-hijackings and a mock plane crash. There were multiple, specific warnings from foreign governments of impending attacks, including potential targets and the names of several alleged 9/11 hijackers. The main members of the 9/11 Commission all had major conflicts of interest. The Commission Report omitted and altered evidence that contradicted the official story (see Sibel Edmonds and WTC 7). Insider trading (put options on American, United and other 9/11-affected companies) was never properly investigated. The SEC could trace who made these trades. Reports of involvement by Pakistani Intelligence (ISI) were never officially acknowledged or investigated.

Some prominent travelers such as San Francisco mayor Willie Brown and top Pentagon officials were reportedly warned not to fly on 9/11. Who warned them? What did they know? Other groups and individuals also received warnings or suspiciously changed plans or moved out of the WTC soon before 9/11. Until 9/11/01, no steel frame skyscraper had ever collapsed completely due to fire. With only moderate fires and minor structural damage, WTC Building 7 imploded at 5pm into a tidy pile of rubble. The collapse of the towers and WTC 7 all exhibited characteristics of CONTROLLED DEMOLITION. Several FBI investigations which could have uncovered the 9/11 plot were squashed and sabotaged by key FBI officials. In September, 2000, Neo-Con think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC) said of their imperialistic vision, 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. PNAC members included Bush Administration insiders such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby and Perle. There are many historical precedents of false flag and state sponsored terrorism. Operation Northwoods was a top secret US plan in the 1960s to carry out a campaign of terror, including blowing up airplanes, and blame it on Cuba as a pretext to invade and overthrow Castro.

In 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' what are the facts?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-0406200376jun20,0,6039379.story

Lots of statistics A great many statistics fly by in the movie -- such as assertions that 6 percent to 7 percent of the United States is owned by Saudi Arabians, and that Saudi companies have paid more than $1.4 billion to Bush family interests. But Moore doesn't explain how he arrived at them, or what these vague interests comprise. Moore and his team say they have news reports and other evidence to back up the numbers, and that they will be posted on his Web site (www.michaelmoore.com) after the film's release. Moore also may be criticized for the way he portrays the evacuation of the extended bin Laden family from the U.S. after Sept. 11. As the Sept. 11 commission has found, the Saudi government was able to pull strings at senior levels of the Bush administration to help the bin Ladens leave the U.S. But while the film clearly suggests that the flights occurred at a time when all air traffic was grounded immediately after the attacks ("Even Ricky Martin

couldn't fly," Moore says over video of the singer wandering in an airport lobby), the Sept. 11 commission said in a report this April that there was "no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi Arabian nationals departed the United States before the reopening of national airspace" and that the FBI had concluded that no one aboard the flights was involved in Sept. 11. In conversation, Moore defended the scene, saying his goal was to show how the White House was eager to bend and break the rules for Saudi friends -- in this case, the extended family of the terrorist who had just brought down the twin towers and attacked the Pentagon. And as reporters have found, the White House still refuses to document fully how the flights were arranged. Moore usually revels in his role as the target of conservative attacks, and his delight in playing the mischievous, little-guy bomb-thrower has brought him fame, wealth and the devotion of fans more interested in rhetorical force than precision. But with "Fahrenheit" he has taken on his biggest and best-defended target yet, and his production staff says that, on his orders, they have taken no chances in checking and double-checking the film, knowing Bush supporters would pounce on factual mistakes. Moore is readying for a conservative counterattack, saying he has created a political-style "war room" to offer an instant response to any assault on the film's credibility. He has retained Chris Lehane, a Democratic Party strategist known as a master of the black art of "oppo," or opposition research, used to discredit detractors. He also hired outside factcheckers, led by a former general counsel of The New Yorker and a veteran member of that magazine's legendary fact-checking team, to vet the film. Threatens lawsuits And he is threatening to go one step further, saying he has consulted with lawyers who can bring defamation suits against anyone who maligns the film or damages his reputation. "We want the word out," says Moore, who says he should have responded more quickly to allegations of inaccuracy in his Oscar-winning 2002 documentary, "Bowling for Columbine." "Any attempts to libel me will be met by force," he said, not an ounce of humor in his familiar voice. "The most important thing we have is truth on our side. If they persist in telling lies, knowingly telling a lie with malice, then I'll take them to court." As proof of its scrupulousness, the Moore team cites adjustments it made to the film's portrayal of Attorney General John Ashcroft. The film is brutal to Ashcroft, depicting him as a glassy-eyed architect of efforts to shred the Constitution, who became attorney general only after he proved himself so unpopular in his home state of Missouri that he lost a Senate race to a former Democratic governor who died in a plane crash a month before Election Day. "Voters preferred the dead guy," Moore deadpans in the film, a line that drew belly

laughs at recent preview screenings. (In reality, voters knew they were, in effect, casting ballots for the governor's widow). An earlier version of the film, however, included a reference to a widely circulated charge, broadcast by CBS News in July 2001, that Ashcroft had received warning of threats and stopped flying on commercial airlines. Tia Lessin, supervising producer of "Fahrenheit 9/11," said the reference to the CBS report was cut after Moore's fact-checking team found evidence that Ashcroft had flown commercially at least twice that summer. "We have gone through every single word of this film -- literally every word -- and verified its accuracy," said Joanne Doroshow, a public interest lawyer and filmmaker who shared in a 1993 Oscar for documentaries and who joined the fact-checking effort last month. Doroshow is responsible for preparing what she calls a "fact-checking bible," with material ranging from newspaper and magazine articles to copies of the Federal Register, that will allow the film's lawyers and publicists to support its allegations.