What they don't tell you: Verbal Gaffes about 9-11

Verbal gaffes from Bush and Rummy about what really happened on 9-11-2001

Hi, this is Jody Paulson from Moscow, ID with what they don’t tell you.

Today I want to talk about a couple of possible slip ups in the Bush administration’s story about what really happened on Sept 11, 2001. The slips come from none other that Donald Rumsfeld and George W. himself.

Last Christmas Eve, Rumsfeld made a surprise visit to US troops and made an even more surprising statement. Here’s what he said: "I think all of us have a sense if we imagine the kind of world we would face if the people who bombed the mess hall in Mosul, or the people who did the bombing in Spain, or the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania and attacked the Pentagon, the people who cut off peoples' heads on television to intimidate, to frighten – indeed the word 'terrorized' is just that. Its purpose is to terrorize, to alter behavior, to make people be something other than that which they want to be."

My question, of course, is who ARE the terrorists Mr. Rumsfeld is speaking of? Maybe we can get a hint with his own words: “shot down the plane over Pennsylvania.”

The official story, of course, is that flight 93 passengers heroically rose up and caused the plane to crash. However, I remember early reports on the internet that the plane had been shot down. This notion was later backed up by several eyewitness that saw a second “military-type” plane at the crash scene and wreckage patterns that showed parts from Flight 93 miles from the main crash site. Here’s what eyewitness Susan Mcelwain said about it:

"The plane I saw was heading right to the point where Flight 93 crashed and must have been there at the very moment it came down. There's no way I imagined this plane - it was so low it was virtually on top of me. It was white with no markings but it was definitely military, it just had that look.

"It had two rear engines, a big fin on the back like a spoiler on the back of a car and with two upright fins at the side. I haven't found one like it on the Internet. It definitely wasn't one of those executive jets. The FBI came and talked to me and said there was no plane around.

"Then they changed their story and tried to say it was a plane taking pictures of the crash 3,000 ft. up.

"But I saw it and it was there before the crash and it was 40 ft. above my head. They did not want my story - nobody here did."

Then there was a 1-ton section of engine that landed a mile from the crash scene, supposedly thrown from the impact site. Other debris from the plane was found 2 ½ miles away, and mail and other papers from the plane were found eight miles from the crash site, supposedly "blown" there by a 10-mph breeze, after the plane hit the ground.

Here’s another interesting verbal gaffe: this time from President Bush. He inexplicably repeated this obviously erroneous account twice:

Upon hearing news of the first crash at the WTC at 8:55, he says he thought, “That's one lousy pilot.” Yet the Federal Aviation Administration was aware, since 8:20 at the latest, that American Airlines Flight 11 had been hijacked.

Here’s a quote from the president at a Dec 2001 Florida town meeting when a boy named Jordan asked him about how he felt when he first heard about the attacks on the WTC:

"Well, Jordan, you're not going to believe what state I was in when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in Florida. And my Chief of Staff, Andy Card -- actually, I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly, myself, and I said, well, there's one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible accident. But I was whisked off there, I didn't have much time to think about it. And I was sitting in the classroom, and Andy Card, my Chief of Staff, who is sitting over here, walked in and said, "A second plane has hit the tower, America is under attack."

Think about that for a minute. The president saw a live, televised account of the *first* plane that hit the world trade center? What station was that on? I guess I missed it. It’d be interesting to know how they knew to set up the cameras for that one.

At least he’s consistant with the telling of his story. Here’s what he said at a town hall meeting in January 2002:

“well, first of all, when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on. And you know, I thought it was pilot error and I was amazed that anybody could make such a terrible mistake. And something was wrong with the plane, or -- anyway, I'm sitting there, listening to the briefing, and Andy Card came and said, "America is under attack."

In these times, it’s important to listen to what the powerful are saying very carefully. After all, it was GW himself who on December 18, 2000 said: "If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier - just so long as I'm the dictator."