Kristina Borjesson, Author/Investigative Reporter:

The plan to go to war in Iraq was in place right after Bush was inaugurated.  And, you know, his cabinet tells you everything about what their interests are because they're all oil people.  And essentially the way you have to look at the Middle East via this lens of the plan for a New American Century is this:  You have to look at Jordan -- and I'm going to make this very brief -- all the borders of Jordan are oil pipeline rights of way.  The Gulf States:  Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc., those are oil reservoirs.  And Israel, Syria and Lebanon, those are pipeline terminals.  So if you look at it that way, all indications now are that we're headed for Iran.  So if you look at it just as I've described it, you really get a sense of why this was so important for them to do, even on the back of this horrific tragedy.

Christopher Scheer, Author/Reporter-AlterNet:

It has been astonishing, as I imagine many of you agree, since 9/11, it has taken three years just to even get a baseline establishment of what the government's position is on what happened.  For the first year or two, we didn't even hear answers to what happened, when and how.  Now things are finally trickling out due to the commitment of say, widows and other relatives of those who were killed on 9/11.  So we have an administration that has shown itself to be incredibly opportunistic, and unwilling to open the door to discussion about how they acted before and during 9/11, which means that many many people, like Paul Thompson and others, have had to do all this legwork themselves.  And the media has been rather quiescent.  I personally am a skeptic of many of the things that we're going to see here tonight.  I think that a lot more has to be done to ascertain what it is.  And I don't think you have to go so far as to establish that this was a manufactured event, but clearly what we know already is bad enough.  What we know is that the system of security and counterterrorism was blinking red, in the words of George Tenet.  That the warnings of an imminent attack were so severe that something dramatic should have been done.  It was unparalleled.  Instead, our President went on a month-long vacation. And so we know that there was a blind eye turned to the warnings.

We also know that in the event of 9/11, the government was incredibly opportunistic.  That these same guys who were in PNAC, who were in the American Enterprise Institute, and who were strewn throughout the top level of the government, quickly, within hours, seized on this event to push their pet obsession of invading Iraq, which as most of you probably know by now, did not have weapons of mass destruction, was not a threat to us, who had nothing to do with 9/11.  And  42% of Americans in a poll taken this week still believe that Iraq had something to do with 9/11.  So that means we have our work cut out for us to talk to that 42% and say, "Where is your head?  What are you thinking?  Can you read this, can you look at this, can you think about this again?  Because I imagine that all of you are here and this conference is happening because of the Internet. 20-30 years ago you could not have had this level of response to an event like this without the media taking part.  You guys are all part of the media now, and you all have enormous power by using that and talking to people. 

Jenna Orkin, WTC Environmental Organization:

The other night, we had a similar meeting, and there was a discussion about the dire situation with oil.  We're running out of supplies.  I want to know if the people on this panel think that there's a solution, since we're so dependent on oil?

Ed Begley, Jr. -- Host:

One of the most patriotic things we can do is lessen our dependence on Mideast oil and stop funding these people.  There is a very direct line these dollars take to go to people who want to do us harm around the world.  And a hybrid vehicle that cost me $95 from L.A. to Pittsburgh, you can't buy a Greyhound ticket for $95 to Pittsburgh.  It gets 60 mpg, I have an electric car to drive around L.A. that's charged by the sun.  I've owned a windmill since 1985 putting out many homes worth of clean power, so these technologies exist, it's just another way of doing things, and guess what, there's jobs making hybrid cars and solar panels and electric cars and all those things too.  And good jobs.  Jobs with dignity.  Now Paul, can you wrap it up and bring us home please.  And tell a little bit.  Did the 9/11 Commission answer everything for you?

Paul Thompson, Author/Research Writer: 

At least a dozen countries tried to warn the United States: Israel, Egypt, Germany, France, Argentina, Morocco, the list is quite long, and there isn't a single mention of any of those warnings from foreign governments in the 9/11 Commission Report even though these were reported by The New York Times, Washington Post.  So you can see that even some of the most basic facts are not in the 9/11 Commission's Report.  So we cannot trust the report in my opinion really whatsoever.

Ed Begley, Jr. -- Host:

There have been a great number of omissions.  In fact, more than we have time for.  We're about to look up a few of the big ones.  You may recognize the 9/11 Commission Report.  I'm going to read you perhaps it's most astounding confession on page 172:  "The U.S. Government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks.  Ultimately, the question is of little practical significance."  Isn't that interesting?  Doesn't it matter who paid for 9/11?  It also says in the 9/11 Commission Report: "Similarly, we have seen no evidence that any foreign government or foreign government official supplied any funding."  And I think we've discovered Rule 1 of the 9/11 Commission: "Don't Follow The Money".  Dr. Bob Bowman.

Dr. Robert Bowman, Institute of Space and Security Studies: 

What was going through the President's mind?  Get to the very important question that Jenna asked earlier about culpability, and what do we believe, and was this something that just dropped into their laps, or whatever.  In attempting to answer this, we have three different kinds of information.  I'm not going to go into them.  You've been exposed to a lot of them tonight and will be to more of them.  A lot of these pieces of information, taken together, prove that the official story, the official conspiracy theory of 9/11, is a bunch of hogwash.  It's impossible.  But they don't prove what really happened and who was responsible.  But there's a second group of facts having to do with the cover-up, and you know, these are a whole bunch of things like the confiscation of the surveillance tapes of the impact on the Pentagon, the confiscation of the air traffic control voice tapes, it goes on and on and on, taken together these things prove that high levels of our government don't want us to know what happened and who was responsible.  And then there's a third set of facts that impinges upon the President's thinking and all of that.  These are the facts of what happened after 9/11.  And this is a historical record.  For example, Ashcroft and his cronies got their Patriot Act which takes away our civil liberties and trashes the Bill of Rights.  Unocal got its invasion of Afghanistan and secured a route for oil and gas pipeline for a trillion dollars worth of gas from the Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean.  Cheney's Halliburton got no-bid contracts to support the troops in destroying Iraq and other contracts to rebuild it.  And more importantly, all those PNAC guys, the neo-cons, got their invasion of Iraq, they got regime change in Iraq.  So the questions come, "Who gained from 9/11?  Who covered up crucial information about 9/11?  And who put out the patently false stories about 9/11 in the first place?"  When you take those three things together, I think the case is pretty clear that it's highly placed individuals in the administration with all roads passing through Dick Cheney.

I think the very kindest thing we can say about George W. Bush and all the people in the U.S. Government that have been involved in this massive cover-up, the very kindest thing we can say, is that they were aware of the impending attacks and let them happen.

Now some people will say that's much too kind.  However, even that is high treason and conspiracy to commit murder.

When we talk about the rest of this stuff, there is one thing I want us to keep in mind:  If enough of the American people are stupid enough, and manipulated enough, to re-elect this gang of thugs, then we, the true American Patriots, will have no recourse but to continue pushing for a real investigation, perhaps by the Attorney General of New York City, who knows, an investigation telling the truth and leading to the indictment of these people, their conviction, their removal from office, and their incarceration for a very long period of time. [AB-1]

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American-Buddha Librarian's Comments:

[AB-1] You're a handsome devil, Robert Bowman.  And photogenic too.  You could give Reagan a run for his money.  Why don't you run for President?  I'll vote for you!  I could be your vice-president.

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