9/11

9/11, al Qaeda, War on Terror

6 at Guantánamo Said to Face Trial in 9/11 Case

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From the New York Times:

Military prosecutors are in the final phases of preparing the first sweeping case against suspected conspirators in the plot that led to the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, and drew the United States into war, people who have been briefed on the case said.

The charges, to be filed in the military commission system at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, would involve as many as six detainees held at the detention camp, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the former senior aide to Osama bin Laden, who has said he was the principal planner of the plot.

The case could begin to fulfill a longtime goal of the Bush administration: establishing culpability for the terrorist attacks of 2001. It could also help the administration make its case that some detainees at Guantánamo, where 275 men remain, would pose a threat if they are not held at Guantánamo or elsewhere. Officials have long said that a half-dozen men held at Guantánamo played essential roles in the plot directed by Mr. Mohammed, from would-be hijackers to financiers.

But the case would also bring new scrutiny to the military commission system, which has a troubled history and has been criticized as a system designed to win convictions but that does not provide the legal protections of American civilian courts.

War-crimes charges against the men would almost certainly place the prosecutors in a battle over the treatment of inmates because at least two detainees tied to the 2001 terror attacks were subject to aggressive interrogation techniques that critics say amounted to torture.

One official who has been briefed on the case said the military prosecutors were considering seeking the death penalty for Mr. Mohammed, although no final decision appears to have been made. The official added that the military prosecutors had decided to focus on the Sept. 11 attacks in part as an effort to try to establish credibility for the military commission system before a new administration takes the White House next January.

Editor — More than 1,000 were tried by military commissions during or soon after World War II, with a conviction rate of 88%, slightly lower than the 93% conviction rate in all federal courts at the time.

9/11, conspiracy theories

Stoned again, Willie Nelson joins the 9/11 “truthers”

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“Don’t let your cowboys grow up to be babies.” That was Willie Nelson singing during the Super Bowl’s pre-game show. Stoned again, Mr. Nelson also went on the radio recently with the leading 9/11 “truther” and grave robber, Alex Jones.

Before listening to that audio, here are the learned opinions of the folks at Protec Documentation Services, Inc, “the world’s most knowledgeable independent authorities on explosive demolition, having performed engineering studies, structural analysis, vibration/air overpressure monitoring and photographic services on well over 1,000 structure blasting events in more than 30 countries.” On August 8, 2006, their Director of Field Operations, Brent Blanchard, and a Protec team produced a scientific study of the collapses. Concerning WTC Tower 7, they said, in part:

“Seismographs at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, recorded the collapses on WTC 1, 2 and 7. This data was later released to the public and currently appears on their website. Additionally, on 9/11 Protec field technicians were utilizing portable field seismographs to continuously record ground vibrations on several construction sites in Manhattan and Brooklyn for liability purposes.

“In all cases where seismographs detected the collapses, waveform readings indicate a single, gradually ascending and descending level of ground vibrations during the event. At no point during 9/11 were sudden or independent vibration “spikes” documented by any seismograph, and we are unaware of any entity possessing such data.

“This evidence makes a compelling argument against explosive demolition. The laws of physics dictate that any detonation powerful enough to defeat steel columns would have transferred excess energy through those columns into the ground, and would have certainly been detected by at least one of the monitors that were sensitive enough to record the structural collapses. However, a detailed analysis of all available data reveals no presence of any unusual or abnormal events.”

You can read their complete report here. Perhaps Willie Nelson will someday set down his marijuana joint and sober up long enough to read it as well. HotAir.com has the audio of Willie Nelson running down his country on the radio.

Please, don’t let your babies grow up to be drug addicts.