Montgomery County, MD Green Party Blog

Judy Miller of the New York Times has made public a 9/11 story she wish she wrote–because she got the information in July 2001, and because her source was an “impecable” source within the NSA who told her of a NSA intelligence report that predicted a large al Qaeda attack.

I think everybody knew that an attack was coming — everyone who followed this. But you know you can only ‘cry wolf’ within a newspaper… before people start saying there he goes — or there she goes — again!

I remember the weekend before July 4, 2001 in particular, because for some reason the people who were worried about Al Qaeda believed that was the weekend that there was going to be an attack on the US or on major American target somewhere. It was going to be a large, well-coordinated attack.

There was always a lot going on at the White House, so to a certain extent, there was that kind of ‘Cry wolf’ problem, but I got the sense that part of the reason that I was being told of what was going on was that the people in counter terrorism were trying to get the word to the President or the senior officials through the press, because they were not able to get listened to themselves.

This is a stunner in so many ways, it’s hard to know where to begin. Was the Bush administration really that incompetant that the NSA had to plant stories to get Bush’s attention? Or were there people who didn’t want Bush to know for their own reasons?

Nobody has explained how the World Trade Center towers could collapse so perfectly into their footprints, or how they could collapse at free fall rates–as a growing number of Ph.D.s in physics are pointing out. Nobody has explained the short selling on all the companies involved in the tragedy. Nobody has explained how kerosene could melt steel. Nobody has explained why no high rise, before or since, has been brought down by fire or plane crash.

Now we’re told that “everybody knew that an attack was coming.” The timing of the leak to Judy Miller coincides with the high alert called by Bush’s chief terrorism official–who subsequently resigned in despair and took a job in security in the World Trade Center, where he died on 9/11.

Shortly after this flurry of activity, Bush went on vacation to Crawford, apparently still in blissfull ignorance of the impending attack that “everybody knew about.”

I don’t know what the truth is, but it stinks!

Environmentalism and economic growth go hand in hand.

But even more than its soil-enriching, moisture-conserving utility, mulch is an organic metaphor, tying together the various pieces of Chicago’s novel development strategy, praised by the Sierra Club and the Chamber of Commerce alike. By wrapping its arms and famous big shoulders around its Latin motto — Urbs in Horto (City in a Garden) — Chicago has become a global model for how a metropolis can pursue environmental goals to achieve economic success.

During the last decade, the city’s performance, measured in virtually every conventional category of civic well-being, has been off the charts, local boosters say. Chicago attracted more than 100,000 new residents, added tens of thousands of downtown jobs, prompted a high-rise housing boom, reduced poverty rates, built thousands of affordable homes, spurred a $9-billion-a-year visitor and convention industry, and transformed itself into one of the most beautiful cities in America.

Click here for New York Times’ link.

No doubt the author will be accused of being either an anti-semite or a self-loathing Jew. Maybe both. The Israel-right-or-wrong crowd can be downright hysterical.

Six months: That’s how long Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently gave Palestinians to meet Israel’s conditions for negotiating peace. Yet even that brief opening was just lip service. For ever since he accepted the fact that Israel must cede land to remain a Jewish state, Olmert’s preferred partner has been Washington, not Ramallah.

Click here for link.

A group of scientists urged Congress on Wednesday to fund research for plug-in hybrid vehicles, touting the technology as another way to reduce the nation’s dependence on oil through the help of a simple electrical socket.

Click here for link.