are there any other Alabama DU'ers that think that LIHOP may be true?

I know that this kind of stuff is generally considered to be outlandish. But why exactly is that the case?

It is a matter of public record that the Project For A New American Century posited that it might take a "new Pearl Harbor" to get enough support to carry out their neo-con agenda. And voila, just a few months after they take executive power, we indeed saw the new Pearl Harbor.

For the life of me, I can't see how 9/11 helped the Arab cause or the Islamic cause or the Palestinian cause in any way. But it is very clear that 9/11 helped the neo-fascist Republicans. Every hat that they wear has been hung on 9/11. They have passed draconian, constitution-destroying legislation, and embarked on a senseless, seemingly endless war that would have been impossible if not for the murders on that brisk September day.

And that the US military was conducting previously scheduled exercises that mirrored the real-life events that happened that very day stretches it too far.

Do you think that Bush and Cheney are too moral... just a little bit moral... that they would never have participated in an event that caused 3,000 innocent Americans to die? If so, how do you explain the Iraq war?

I don't know for a fact that the administration is culpable for the events of September 11, 2001, but the facts certainly don't paint Bush and Cheney and those around them in a favorable light.

Has the administration done anything, ever, to make you think that they wouldn't mind sacrificing a few thousand American citizens in exchange for more power?

Call me a nut, if you must. But please consider the events of that horrible day in the context of what we know to be true about the current regime. They, at every turn, favor power over anything else, and everything else be damned.

National Energy Policy Development Group in the early summer of 2001. I ran across a media report that had the following exchange between a staffer on Cheney's committee and one of the committee members, e.g. Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco, Shell Oil Co., BP America Inc.

A question was asked about securing the Middle-East oil supply and the staffer said something to the effect, "We expect an event will occur that will allow the U.S. to get involved militarily in the Middle -East".

Someone then asked something to the effect, "What if there is no event"?

The answer was something to the effect, "We will cause an event to occur".

In 2002, I asked DU members to help me search the internet and locate the article but only one person recalled seeing something like that. My OP and replies to it should be in DU's archive .

Cheney will not release transcripts of meetings from his energy committee meetings.

I'm not a conspiracy buff but what I stated above is absolutely correct.

By the way, I want to stress that I'm not saying I believe that they actually helped the event to happen. Just that their record indicates to me that they would have no problem doing something like that if they thought it would benefit them.

and if one occurred or was in the making, were more than willing to go along for the ride.

You see, the "True Believers" at AEI, HF, PNAC, etc. are heavy on words but slow on action. They were to provide the "intellectual" (perhaps the grossest misuse of a word ever) underpinnings for an revenge attack.

My own take is that these guys were so in thralled by the attention that the BushCo, Big Oil, etc. were paying to them that they missed what the real purpose of war with Iraq was: it was to stop Saddam from becoming the Napoleon of the Middle East. Baathist ideology was founded by a Christian Socialist in Lebanon and is a pan-Arab movement. It is secular and "Arab Socialist", i.e., not a creature of Marx, Lenin or Mao, per se.

The Sunnis in the monarchies were dangerous for their threat of bringing a republic into being that transcended existing borders, and Saddam had the money and initial support of the West to begin it with the Kuwait invasion. The Shiites were "too religious" and tied to Iran, the hereditary enemy of the Sunni Arabs, and too close for comfort...being nextdoor, hence able to stop the tap from flowing thru the Gulf.

We played a dangerous game in "the enemy of my enemy" period of "revanche against Iranian occupation of our embassy" by enabling Saddam to rebuild and advance his war machine against the Iranians and then playing footsie with the Taliban and al Qaeda against the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.

I think that Big Oil's greatest fear is that the oil will be nationalized and the "French Revolution" will spread in Iran and Iraq. They are terrified that the tap will start to flow full force, driving the price of oil DOWN! and the corporate profits come to a stop for stupid altruistic things like schools, hospitals, new housing, etc.