World's Biggest Comspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True

[karmakramer]

And as for Clarke not having proof, well all kinds of people in all kinds of high-level positions say all kinds of things.

 

yeah like wmds in iraq lol...

[chenGOD]

Exactly.

[karmakramer]

Its questionable though when high profile officials make such varying accusations.

[awepittance]

yeah 'varying' accusations, that the CIA tried to recruit 2 of the people who ended up killing 3,000 people. Pretty heavy shit, but again easily dismissable if you choose it to be

 

it's useless thinking of them as 2 of the future hijackers - unless Minority Report was a documentary?

 

hehe, if you replace the word Minority Report with Able Danger and the word documentary with 2 year data mining effort you might be onto something :)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJvABLaMUT8

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME0iKZdoYXs

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=383JyWWfAm4&feature=related

 

but all of the things can be also dismissed by the mental gymnast trick of saying 'well hindsight is 20/20' they act as if they just had a pile of disorganized information so fragmented that they couldn't connect the dots. I still get a good lol out of that one

[awepittance]

And as for Clarke not having proof, well all kinds of people in all kinds of high-level positions say all kinds of things.

 

yeah like wmds in iraq lol...

which is interesting to me, because if they had weapons would people have been for the invasion? i dont get it. It's still an unjustified preemptive war of aggression regardless if they had WMDs or not. Its weird to me that this has become a contentious debate, when the debate should be about the premise itself.

[karmakramer]

And as for Clarke not having proof, well all kinds of people in all kinds of high-level positions say all kinds of things.

 

yeah like wmds in iraq lol...

which is interesting to me, because if they had weapons would people have been for the invasion? i dont get it. It's still an unjustified preemptive war of aggression regardless if they had WMDs or not. Its weird to me that this has become a contentious debate, when the debate should be about the premise itself.

 

very good point, but I do think had the al qaeda - saddam and wmds propaganda had not existed it would have been difficult to engage in war... unless some other lie was put forward. lets just say, yes war can be sold.

[awepittance]

well do you remember that initially the Whitehouse tried to blame the anthrax attacks (which later turned by definition to be an inside job, not islamic terrorism, but actual US government officials) on Saddam to get us to go to war? This is how we ended up talking about the mobile weapons anthrax labs in Iraq. The Anthrax attacks amounted to what i can only describe as a knock-out punch to the American psyche. 9/11 was horrific for america, then 1 month later people are afraid to get their own mail because of Anthrax. Shit pushed people over the edge into irrationality

it was a combination of lies, and wouldn't have worked at all if there was no existing fear in the US about a chemical or bioweapons attack.

[Guest boo]

maybe i'm being short sighted but all that makes me think is that they were trying to get some badasses on their side.. so they could work out what was being planned.

 

edit: just talking about the clarke thing

[awepittance]

that's probably the most logical way to look at it on it's face. It leads to the inevitable conclusion that there was a very coordinated coverup after 9/11 happened to erase alot of the history concerning the investigative methods leading up to 9/11. If George Tenant, the director of the CIA authorized them to try and recruit 2 of the people who eventually helped commit the attacks, i think the American public would very much want to know that. Up until this Clarke statement, it was only in the world of 'conspiracy theory' that the CIA actually was trying to hire (or did hire) people who hijacked those planes, now it's been confirmed by an inside source. So on this simple slice of 'conspiracy theory' folklore, it has been proved to be true.

 

The amount of foreknowledge people had in high positions of power keeps getting worse. i just think over time the more information gets leaked and revealed it will become far harder to latch onto the belief of 'oh they were caught with their pants down, those incompetent us government officials'.

[karmakramer]

well do you remember that initially the Whitehouse tried to blame the anthrax attacks (which later turned by definition to be an inside job, not islamic terrorism, but actual US government officials) on Saddam to get us to go to war? This is how we ended up talking about the mobile weapons anthrax labs in Iraq. The Anthrax attacks amounted to what i can only describe as a knock-out punch to the American psyche. 9/11 was horrific for america, then 1 month later people are afraid to get their own mail because of Anthrax. Shit pushed people over the edge into irrationality

it was a combination of lies, and wouldn't have worked at all if there was no existing fear in the US about a chemical or bioweapons attack.

 

I remember the anthrax attacks to being linked to islamic terrorism but not saddam. It is odd , if richard clarkes and clintons account on trying to take out osama are factual (republicans were against military strategies involved in taking out osama) then republicans are painfully hypocritical.

 

"I had responsibility for trying to protect this country, i tried and failed to get bin laden, i regret it, but I did try. And I did everything I thought I responsibly could. The entire military was against sending special forces into Afghanistan and refueling that helicopter and no one thought we could do it otherwise because we could not get the CIA and FBI to certify that al qaeda was responsible while I was president. And so I left office. And yet I get asked this all the time and they had three times as much time to deal with it and no on ever asks them about it. I think thats strange."

 

-clinton

 

[awepittance]

to give you a response check this shocking article http://abcnews.go.co...id=92270&page=1

 

this is from Oct of 2001, i cannot fucking believe ABC news still has this revealing piece of propaganda up. This is not the article i was hoping to find, but this is right after the Whitehouse starting backing off of the Saddam / bentonite link. They quickly backed off of this original claim for unknown reasons, what people don't realize is that the initial story was front page news, the subsequent retractions were back paged. Which parts will the american people remember the most? probably not the 2nd story that issues a semi retraction.

 

but you are right, the letters themselves seem open ended enough to just be linked with the spectre of 'Islamic terror'

 

 

(lol)

 

too bad they never did any hand writing analysis for Bruce Ivans, the supposed Anthrax attacker who is now dead and was never charged with the crime until after his death (the fbi just released a long press release following his suicide explaining why he was definitively the anthrax attacker, unfortunately they never had enough evidence to bring charges to him while he was alive, very convenient for them)

[karmakramer]

heres more from that interview thats relevant , very relevant

 

edit:fuckin a how do u time stamp youtube videos

[karmakramer]

 

there

[chenGOD]

the Able danger thing is interesting - because of several points:

1.Shaffer confirms what i said - that there was a severe lack of inter-agency cooperation, which undoubtedly hindered progress.

He told me, “I clearly understand the difference. I clearly understand. We’re going after the leadership. You guys are going after the body. But, it doesn’t matter. The bottomline is, CIA will never give you the best information from ‘Alex Base’ or anywhere else. CIA will never provide that to you because if you were successful in your effort to target Al Qaeda, you will steal our thunder. Therefore, we will not support this.” [Alex Base was the CIA’s covert action element which was conducting the Osama bin Laden finding.]

 

I believe he was being a friend. I believe he was sincerely telling me this because it was the truth. He said, short of General Schoomaker calling George Tenet directly, the best information would never be released. To my knowledge, and my other colleagues’ knowledge, there was no information ever released to us because CIA chose not to participate in Able Danger.

 

2. If you believe in Able Danger, then do you have to believe that Al Qaeda was a threat? After all, the people participating in it certainly did.

I was frankly shocked, but I figured the best thing we could do as a country was to go after Al Qaeda, because it was a developing, looming threat. We’d already been attacked twice with the [u.S.] embassy bombings [in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998]. There was a record of Al Qaeda doing things. We were concerned and, again, the two principal generals, Schoomaker and Shelton, were concerned that this was a developing threat that we needed to look at.

 

Both of those quotes come from Lt. Col. Shaffer - here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050924164439/http://www.gsnmagazine.com/sep_05/shaffer_interview.html

 

Additionally - what it seems to say is that while they knew these guys were Al Qaeda - it did not enable them to forecast the events that were to unfold, just that something was going to happen. And Clarke is on record as saying "Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon." (p.389 "The Looming Tower" paperback).

 

I don't know what it means, but it seems to me that it's more a question of petty jealousies and incompetence than conspiracy.

[vamos scorcho]

how the fuck did you make a poll

[awepittance]

that the US government is spying on every single citizen in the United States and many other countries around the world, storing it's phone calls, and internet history by working with corporations in a text-book fascistic way to obtain the data without a warrant or judicial oversight

what was once a paranoid tin-foil 'theory' is now provable and fact

[awepittance]

they don't have the manpower to have a human read and evaluate all communications, but they can database them, categorize them, and store all of them (including phone call audio) indefinitely. I don't think a human has to be directly involved in the collection of the data to classify as spying

[Adieu]

yeah. but to say they're "spying on every citizen" makes it sound a lot worse. they just don't have the time or the money and could give a fuck if you bought a "herbal vaporise r" on ebay.

 

It disgusts me when people make comments like this. You're right they probably don't care until it is their best interest to, or they decide you need to be dealt with. Them having the potential to have leverage over every person located in the USA doesn't seem like a good idea, I dunno, just me.

 

edit: I might actually be convinced that this is acceptable if the laws weren't shitty and oppressive, and people didn't expect any individual in the public sector to act as if they are better behaved than jesus himself. Also, if our government wasn't run by corporations then again that would probably solve half of this.

[Guest A/D]

The problem with the NSA spy network is not whether it's a "necessary evil" in today's world. It's that it gives unreasonable power to anyone who might someday gain access to that network. Someone unsavory just might gain office (I know it sounds crazy, bear with me) and use that power for something less forgivable than "national security". Or a powerful corporation could influence a politician to use it for their needs.

 

I'm also interested to see if the government is bold enough to use this data in court. What's your recourse if they were to fabricate something from their records? Should I expect more of the NSA than the Texas Senate?

 

Kind of OT, sorry.

[delet...]

unsavoury people are already in power, that's why they built this network.

[Guest cult fiction]

I remember when I was a kid playing Deus Ex and hearing about the ECHELON AI system and thinking it was so far fetched. Guess it's happening.

 

 

yeah. but to say they're "spying on every citizen" makes it sound a lot worse. they just don't have the time or the money and could give a fuck if you bought a "herbal vaporise r" on ebay.

 

It disgusts me when people make comments like this. You're right they probably don't care until it is their best interest to, or they decide you need to be dealt with. Them having the potential to have leverage over every person located in the USA doesn't seem like a good idea, I dunno, just me.

 

edit: I might actually be convinced that this is acceptable if the laws weren't shitty and oppressive, and people didn't expect any individual in the public sector to act as if they are better behaved than jesus himself. Also, if our government wasn't run by corporations then again that would probably solve half of this.

 

 

No, it's just plain unacceptable under any circumstance - the whole thing is so far beyond the realm of common sense that it's unreal.

 

 

Interestingly enough, video camera voyeurism was once not a crime - I learned this from an awesome Lifetime movie you should watch if you are having trouble understanding why the NSA is in the wrong.

 

I mean, if somebody is just recording you secretly and masturbating to it at home, what's the problem?

 

Furthermore, every NSA analyst is totally 100% not a creep who is going to use the information collected to fuck over your life because you stole his girlfriend or spilled a drink on him or whatever else.

[goDel]

Is it a conspiracy theory though?

 

The notion of a secret service is not so secret. And that secret service collecting data is no secret as well. The size and scope of data collection, i can sort of agree. But conspiracy theory? If Obama is trying to hide his homosexual, Kenian past and is passing on Bush policies to keep people from leaking that info, you have a conspiracy. A secret service hiding what they do, is not really a conspiracy, is it?

 

I'd rather put Robert Reich story in the bin of factual conspiracy theories:

Suppose a small group of extremely wealthy people sought to systematically destroy the U.S. government by (1) finding and bankrolling new candidates pledged to shrinking and dismembering it; (2) intimidating or bribing many current senators and representatives to block all proposed legislation, prevent the appointment of presidential nominees, eliminate funds to implement and enforce laws, and threaten to default on the nation's debt; (3) taking over state governments in order to redistrict, gerrymander, require voter IDs, purge voter rolls, and otherwise suppress the votes of the majority in federal elections; (4) running a vast PR campaign designed to convince the American public of certain big lies, such as climate change is a hoax, and (5) buying up the media so the public cannot know the truth.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/an-impertinent-question_b_3582032.html

[LimpyLoo]

oh god 9/11 conspiracies

 

 

Everytime I start to think WATMM is a safe-haven from the silliness of the internet, the world...

[awepittance]

 

it disgusts me that people think their boring lives are significant enough to warrant government attention. i'm not saying what they're doing is good, i'm just saying people are paranoid. i'm pro snowden and all that, i just get so sick of the fear.

 

maybe certain people are paranoid, but put yourself in the position of a journalist who may have just landed on incriminating information about a government official or a whistleblower for a major corporation or government agency.

[Adieu]

 

 

yeah. but to say they're "spying on every citizen" makes it sound a lot worse. they just don't have the time or the money and could give a fuck if you bought a "herbal vaporise r" on ebay.

 

It disgusts me when people make comments like this. You're right they probably don't care until it is their best interest to, or they decide you need to be dealt with. Them having the potential to have leverage over every person located in the USA doesn't seem like a good idea, I dunno, just me.

 

edit: I might actually be convinced that this is acceptable if the laws weren't shitty and oppressive, and people didn't expect any individual in the public sector to act as if they are better behaved than jesus himself. Also, if our government wasn't run by corporations then again that would probably solve half of this.

 

 

it disgusts me that people think their boring lives are significant enough to warrant government attention. i'm not saying what they're doing is good, i'm just saying people are paranoid. i'm pro snowden and all that, i just get so sick of the fear. what people don't realise is that the government / corporations / organised religion aren't evil per se. they're just incompetent, selfish and corrupt.

 

EDIT: capitalism *jazz hands*

 

 

 

There isn't a good argument for them doing it. There is too great a capacity for them to abuse their power. It shouldn't be happening. End of story.

 

What does "not evil per se" even mean? That they aren't evil they are just carrying out things perceived as evil, because of a complete inability to function appropriately? Is that better than evil? Is intention the measure of whether an action is right or wrong?

 

You don't play freedom like a game of odds. If someone else's rights are being infringed upon because of the government overreaching and BREAKING THE LAW then it might as well be any of us.

 

I would call ignoring the basic needs of other people, most especially when you have the capability to enfranchise those people, pretty fucking evil.