CIA Lied About Torture To Justify Using It (Senate Report)

[Tiresais]

I mentioned this report in another thread, but more information is being leaked as the CIA continues to block the report;

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/n4cCIg7YKWA" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/n4cCIg7YKWA</a>

*A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques. The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use — and later tried to defend — excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document...* The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

*Read more here from Greg Miller, Adam Goldman and Ellen Nakashima at The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-misled-on-interrogation-program-senate-report-says/2014/03/31/eb75a82a-b8dd-11e3-96ae-f2c36d2b1245_story.html

[kounty]

is there really any difference between obama and bush?

[Deeks]

The end justify the means. Anything to protect the country. Bush, Obama, Hilary, etc. It does not make a difference. If you are in the protective services, you get a different perspective. There is a thin line between right and wrong. Legal and illegal methods. If they need to put you head in a bowl of ice water to get info to "save the citizens", they will do it and cover up. CIA, KGB, MOSSAD, Pak-SIS, Indian Inteligence, China. You just don't be in the wrong position at the wrong time. Allyuh honestly expect the CIA to say they used torture?

[D.H.W]

What's new

[Tiresais]

A number of senators were all for the CIA violating everyone's privacy... until they violated theirs. Christopher Hitchens famously put his money where his mouth was when he supported waterboarding, and got waterboarded, and came out saying it was torture and he no longer supported it.

The 'new' thing if it can be called that is that the CIA is bold-facedly lying to the committee that's supposed to be overseeing their operations and preventing their assessment from being published...

[Ramgoat]

 CIA lied . Why is this news?

[Socapro]

CIA lied . Why is this news?

Anyone who is surprised by this news is pretty naive.

[ribbit]

CIA been on the ropes since 9/11. PR is one thing; They make too many big mistake.

[Tiresais]

They're pretty competent - difference is the context - the CIA's mistakes are more likely to be broadcast given the society and culture they're a product of - they face less (but still extensive) reporting constraints as compared to other agencies across the world.

[ribbit]

They're pretty competent - difference is the context - the CIA's mistakes are more likely to be broadcast given the society and culture they're a product of - they face less (but still extensive) reporting constraints as compared to other agencies across the world.

cia miss ukraine and key events in the arab spring (egypt, libya) in obama's term alone. They miss snowden completely. This is not a picture of competence much less success.

[Tiresais]

They're pretty competent - difference is the context - the CIA's mistakes are more likely to be broadcast given the society and culture they're a product of - they face less (but still extensive) reporting constraints as compared to other agencies across the world.

cia miss ukraine and key events in the arab spring (egypt, libya) in obama's term alone. They miss snowden completely. This is not a picture of competence much less success.

Sure, but how many successes or failures do you know about the KSB? MSS? We're going to hear more about failures of the CIA as they operate (nominally) under a more open media and politic. Failures of the KSB and MSS will typically be revealed by Western media - certainly not their own.

[ribbit]

They're pretty competent - difference is the context - the CIA's mistakes are more likely to be broadcast given the society and culture they're a product of - they face less (but still extensive) reporting constraints as compared to other agencies across the world.

cia miss ukraine and key events in the arab spring (egypt, libya) in obama's term alone. They miss snowden completely. This is not a picture of competence much less success.

Sure, but how many successes or failures do you know about the KSB? MSS? We're going to hear more about failures of the CIA as they operate (nominally) under a more open media and politic. Failures of the KSB and MSS will typically be revealed by Western media - certainly not their own.

so your argument is to basically raise a hypothetical. there *might* be some intelligence services out there somewhere that is doing as bad or worse than the cia it's just that we don't know it because of de vaguaries of de media who doh want to put out this information because the internet is full .... or something.

i'm going out on a limb here but it's safe and reasonable to say there's only ONE fella worldwide who absconded with scads of classified material on the scale of edward snowden. and the absence of someone else having done as much damage to other intelligence service(s) is not due to some conspiracy of the media or some mysterious "constraints" uniformly adopted and observed by everyone in the media.

of course if you can produce some proof of some intelligence failures on the scale of the ones i've outlined then this would justify your claim.

[Tiresais]

They're pretty competent - difference is the context - the CIA's mistakes are more likely to be broadcast given the society and culture they're a product of - they face less (but still extensive) reporting constraints as compared to other agencies across the world.

cia miss ukraine and key events in the arab spring (egypt, libya) in obama's term alone. They miss snowden completely. This is not a picture of competence much less success.

Sure, but how many successes or failures do you know about the KSB? MSS? We're going to hear more about failures of the CIA as they operate (nominally) under a more open media and politic. Failures of the KSB and MSS will typically be revealed by Western media - certainly not their own.

so your argument is to basically raise a hypothetical. there *might* be some intelligence services out there somewhere that is doing as bad or worse than the cia it's just that we don't know it because of de vaguaries of de media who doh want to put out this information because the internet is full .... or something.

i'm going out on a limb here but it's safe and reasonable to say there's only ONE fella worldwide who absconded with scads of classified material on the scale of edward snowden. and the absence of someone else having done as much damage to other intelligence service(s) is not due to some conspiracy of the media or some mysterious "constraints" uniformly adopted and observed by everyone in the media.

of course if you can produce some proof of some intelligence failures on the scale of the ones i've outlined then this would justify your claim.

The list would be long and lengthy, spanning 50 years, and I'm not very familiar with China so will probably leave that to smarter people, so lemme just note some major known failures;

MI6 - Cambridge 5
KGB/KSB - Oleg Penkovsky, Farewell Dossier,

More telling is the list of successes (if that's the right word, given the CIA's immorality) - There are few countries in Latin America they didn't get involved in at one point - successfully supporting coups in Chile, and Guatemala. They also assassinated a number of anti-(non-)capitalist leaders across Africa and Latin America, including Patrice Lumumba. Coups are more their thing, and they're fairly good at them.

Competence is a relative thing, but America wouldn't be as dominant as they are, and their companies as entrenched, if they weren't competent in some regard. They're not the best, but you're making a mistake to underestimate the most well-funded secret service in teh world.

[elan]

MIss, the CIA doh miss nobody. They'll make you think they miss, but they know exactly what going on. Look how easy building 7 come down on 9/11.

[elan]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/1d-RGkYpXCg" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/1d-RGkYpXCg</a>

[ribbit]

They're pretty competent - difference is the context - the CIA's mistakes are more likely to be broadcast given the society and culture they're a product of - they face less (but still extensive) reporting constraints as compared to other agencies across the world.

cia miss ukraine and key events in the arab spring (egypt, libya) in obama's term alone. They miss snowden completely. This is not a picture of competence much less success.

Sure, but how many successes or failures do you know about the KSB? MSS? We're going to hear more about failures of the CIA as they operate (nominally) under a more open media and politic. Failures of the KSB and MSS will typically be revealed by Western media - certainly not their own.

so your argument is to basically raise a hypothetical. there *might* be some intelligence services out there somewhere that is doing as bad or worse than the cia it's just that we don't know it because of de vaguaries of de media who doh want to put out this information because the internet is full .... or something.

i'm going out on a limb here but it's safe and reasonable to say there's only ONE fella worldwide who absconded with scads of classified material on the scale of edward snowden. and the absence of someone else having done as much damage to other intelligence service(s) is not due to some conspiracy of the media or some mysterious "constraints" uniformly adopted and observed by everyone in the media.

of course if you can produce some proof of some intelligence failures on the scale of the ones i've outlined then this would justify your claim.

The list would be long and lengthy, spanning 50 years, and I'm not very familiar with China so will probably leave that to smarter people, so lemme just note some major known failures;

MI6 - Cambridge 5
KGB/KSB - Oleg Penkovsky, Farewell Dossier,

More telling is the list of successes (if that's the right word, given the CIA's immorality) - There are few countries in Latin America they didn't get involved in at one point - successfully supporting coups in Chile, and Guatemala. They also assassinated a number of anti-(non-)capitalist leaders across Africa and Latin America, including Patrice Lumumba. Coups are more their thing, and they're fairly good at them.

Competence is a relative thing, but America wouldn't be as dominant as they are, and their companies as entrenched, if they weren't competent in some regard. They're not the best, but you're making a mistake to underestimate the most well-funded secret service in teh world.

ha ha - is a joke right? i was being generous by restricting the examples over the last decade or so but if you want to go back 50 years please do so.

also, order your examples in terms of the size of the intelligence failure . do you understand why i'm suggesting to do this? an examination of the scale of the failure is far more illuminating. for instance, compare your two examples with the scale of the intelligence failure posed by snowden - particularly since snowden is still an active "threat" to the intelligence community (the cia having not been able to neutralize snowden thus far).

it just occurred to me that you may not appreciate what i'm referring to be the size of the intelligence failure - i mean in terms of geostrategy. for instance, the examples you allude to about successes in latin america vis a vis the failures in the middle east. which would you say should be more important to the cia? pretty clear on the important things, grave and considerable errors have been made by the cia but yes the tin pot regimes in the the backwaters can rest assured the cia will handle things.

[Tiresais]

They're pretty competent - difference is the context - the CIA's mistakes are more likely to be broadcast given the society and culture they're a product of - they face less (but still extensive) reporting constraints as compared to other agencies across the world.

cia miss ukraine and key events in the arab spring (egypt, libya) in obama's term alone. They miss snowden completely. This is not a picture of competence much less success.

Sure, but how many successes or failures do you know about the KSB? MSS? We're going to hear more about failures of the CIA as they operate (nominally) under a more open media and politic. Failures of the KSB and MSS will typically be revealed by Western media - certainly not their own.

so your argument is to basically raise a hypothetical. there *might* be some intelligence services out there somewhere that is doing as bad or worse than the cia it's just that we don't know it because of de vaguaries of de media who doh want to put out this information because the internet is full .... or something.

i'm going out on a limb here but it's safe and reasonable to say there's only ONE fella worldwide who absconded with scads of classified material on the scale of edward snowden. and the absence of someone else having done as much damage to other intelligence service(s) is not due to some conspiracy of the media or some mysterious "constraints" uniformly adopted and observed by everyone in the media.

of course if you can produce some proof of some intelligence failures on the scale of the ones i've outlined then this would justify your claim.

The list would be long and lengthy, spanning 50 years, and I'm not very familiar with China so will probably leave that to smarter people, so lemme just note some major known failures;

MI6 - Cambridge 5
KGB/KSB - Oleg Penkovsky, Farewell Dossier,

More telling is the list of successes (if that's the right word, given the CIA's immorality) - There are few countries in Latin America they didn't get involved in at one point - successfully supporting coups in Chile, and Guatemala. They also assassinated a number of anti-(non-)capitalist leaders across Africa and Latin America, including Patrice Lumumba. Coups are more their thing, and they're fairly good at them.

Competence is a relative thing, but America wouldn't be as dominant as they are, and their companies as entrenched, if they weren't competent in some regard. They're not the best, but you're making a mistake to underestimate the most well-funded secret service in teh world.

ha ha - is a joke right? i was being generous by restricting the examples over the last decade or so but if you want to go back 50 years please do so.

also, order your examples in terms of the size of the intelligence failure . do you understand why i'm suggesting to do this? an examination of the scale of the failure is far more illuminating. for instance, compare your two examples with the scale of the intelligence failure posed by snowden - particularly since snowden is still an active "threat" to the intelligence community (the cia having not been able to neutralize snowden thus far).

it just occurred to me that you may not appreciate what i'm referring to be the size of the intelligence failure - i mean in terms of geostrategy. for instance, the examples you allude to about successes in latin america vis a vis the failures in the middle east. which would you say should be more important to the cia? pretty clear on the important things, grave and considerable errors have been made by the cia but yes the tin pot regimes in the the backwaters can rest assured the cia will handle things.

I'd say the MI6's failure is the most grievous - they had a Russian spy in the upper-hierarchy of MI6 for years. Latin America has been America's most important sphere since the Munroe doctrine - they've considered non-European (and later non-anyone) involvement in the continent the highest priority for their security. Second I'd argue one of the Russian examples - Snowden's releases were more diplomatically embarrassing than endangering the CIA's operations.

I'm not sure what you're arguing exactly - are you arguing that the CIA is incompetent? Are you arguing that the KSB or MSS are more competent? Why do you think that?

[Tiresais]

MIss, the CIA doh miss nobody. They'll make you think they miss, but they know exactly what going on. Look how easy building 7 come down on 9/11.

Elan don't get suckered into conspiracy theory - it's an easy trap. Be more critical. I'll post the section from the Rational wiki - http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/9-11_conspiracy_theories

WTC 7 was demolished by order of the WTC's owner

Rebuttal: This comes primarily from two miscommunications. The first was by BBC News, which broadcast an erroneous report that WTC 7 had collapsed while the building could still be seen standing through the window of their New York studio.[5] The second was an evacuation order ("pull it") that went out shortly before the building, badly damaged in the collapse of the main towers and on fire, collapsed of its own accord. According to the The National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) 2006 Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster report, the reasons for the WTC 7 collapse include:
“”Debris from the collapse of WTC 1, which was 370 feet to the south, ignited fires on at least 10 floors in the building at its south and west faces. However, only the fires on some of the lower floors — 7 through 9 and 11 through 13 — burned out of control. These lower-floor fires — which spread and grew because the water supply to the automatic sprinkler system for these floors had failed — were similar to building fires experienced in other tall buildings. The primary and backup water supply to the sprinkler systems for the lower floors relied on the city's water supply, whose lines were damaged by the collapse of WTC 1 and WTC 2. These uncontrolled lower-floor fires eventually spread to the northeast part of WTC 7, where the building's collapse began.

... [T]he thermal expansion of building elements such as floor beams and girders, which occurred at temperatures hundreds of degrees below those typically considered in current practice for fire-resistance ratings; significant magnification of thermal expansion effects due to the long-span floors in the building; connections between structural elements that were designed to resist the vertical forces of gravity, not the thermally induced horizontal or lateral loads; and an overall structural system not designed to prevent fire-induced progressive collapse.[6]

Although it wasn't completely obvious to the untrained eye at the time, WTC 7 had been seriously compromised by a 20-story gash in one corner facing Ground Zero, and by the time the evacuation order was given was visibly sagging. Conspiracy theorists have also tried to claim that "pull" is standard jargon within the demolition industry to fire off demolition charges within the building; demolition experts have denied this; the usual term would be "shoot it" or "blow it."[7]

You can see flashes all over Building 7 as the demo charges fire off
Rebuttal: No you can't. What you see is the window glass popping out as the facade buckles downwards. The sun is momentarily reflected in each pane of glass as it falls.

I swear to you I used to be big into conspiracy theories - but as part of any undergrad or masters you really need to critically assess claims against the evidence. Fact is, you need to assume a number of unlikely events, and contradictory situations in order to justify American involvement in 9/11. Evidence in conspiracy theories are 'cherry picked' to confirm the theory, and the problem with such a conspiracy is that basically any other evidence can be "thrown out" due to the murky nature of any conspiracy. An assessment of the motives, and superior alternatives available, will quickly dispel 9/11 conspiracies.

Why risk a false-flag operation when there are easier, smarter alternatives? Depends on what you perceive the end-game and motives, but most can be discarded.

[ribbit]

They're pretty competent - difference is the context - the CIA's mistakes are more likely to be broadcast given the society and culture they're a product of - they face less (but still extensive) reporting constraints as compared to other agencies across the world.

cia miss ukraine and key events in the arab spring (egypt, libya) in obama's term alone. They miss snowden completely. This is not a picture of competence much less success.

Sure, but how many successes or failures do you know about the KSB? MSS? We're going to hear more about failures of the CIA as they operate (nominally) under a more open media and politic. Failures of the KSB and MSS will typically be revealed by Western media - certainly not their own.

so your argument is to basically raise a hypothetical. there *might* be some intelligence services out there somewhere that is doing as bad or worse than the cia it's just that we don't know it because of de vaguaries of de media who doh want to put out this information because the internet is full .... or something.

i'm going out on a limb here but it's safe and reasonable to say there's only ONE fella worldwide who absconded with scads of classified material on the scale of edward snowden. and the absence of someone else having done as much damage to other intelligence service(s) is not due to some conspiracy of the media or some mysterious "constraints" uniformly adopted and observed by everyone in the media.

of course if you can produce some proof of some intelligence failures on the scale of the ones i've outlined then this would justify your claim.

The list would be long and lengthy, spanning 50 years, and I'm not very familiar with China so will probably leave that to smarter people, so lemme just note some major known failures;

MI6 - Cambridge 5
KGB/KSB - Oleg Penkovsky, Farewell Dossier,

More telling is the list of successes (if that's the right word, given the CIA's immorality) - There are few countries in Latin America they didn't get involved in at one point - successfully supporting coups in Chile, and Guatemala. They also assassinated a number of anti-(non-)capitalist leaders across Africa and Latin America, including Patrice Lumumba. Coups are more their thing, and they're fairly good at them.

Competence is a relative thing, but America wouldn't be as dominant as they are, and their companies as entrenched, if they weren't competent in some regard. They're not the best, but you're making a mistake to underestimate the most well-funded secret service in teh world.

ha ha - is a joke right? i was being generous by restricting the examples over the last decade or so but if you want to go back 50 years please do so.

also, order your examples in terms of the size of the intelligence failure . do you understand why i'm suggesting to do this? an examination of the scale of the failure is far more illuminating. for instance, compare your two examples with the scale of the intelligence failure posed by snowden - particularly since snowden is still an active "threat" to the intelligence community (the cia having not been able to neutralize snowden thus far).

it just occurred to me that you may not appreciate what i'm referring to be the size of the intelligence failure - i mean in terms of geostrategy. for instance, the examples you allude to about successes in latin america vis a vis the failures in the middle east. which would you say should be more important to the cia? pretty clear on the important things, grave and considerable errors have been made by the cia but yes the tin pot regimes in the the backwaters can rest assured the cia will handle things.

I'd say the MI6's failure is the most grievous - they had a Russian spy in the upper-hierarchy of MI6 for years. Latin America has been America's most important sphere since the Munroe doctrine - they've considered non-European (and later non-anyone) involvement in the continent the highest priority for their security. Second I'd argue one of the Russian examples - Snowden's releases were more diplomatically embarrassing than endangering the CIA's operations.

I'm not sure what you're arguing exactly - are you arguing that the CIA is incompetent? Are you arguing that the KSB or MSS are more competent? Why do you think that?

well your reference to the monroe doctrine goes some ways to explaining where you are coming from. the monroe doctrine is certainly an important statement of usa strategic intentions during its history but time has changed since the 1800s. as early as post-wwii usa geostrategy was updated in accordance with its preeminent position and the demise of britain and alot of these planning statements have remained to the present.

the usa has built several relationships with foreign countries over several decades and for a non-colonial power, it's surprising how many of these relationships have gone sour under the nose of the cia. this is a key failing of the cia as part of its mandate is to be on top of these situations. the back and forth of spy and counter-spy, while highly visible and romantic, is not as significant as losing an ally. the number of countries where the cia has remained oblivious to either a restive population or a key challenger is more than any other service especially when many are in that strategic (post wwii not the 19th century perspective that seems to frame your viewpoint) part of the world. egypt is one of the later examples along with pakistan. there are others and of course the most infamous one being iran. complete failures of intelligence repeated year after year. the failure is systemic.

of course there's also those situations where the cia completely misses the intentions of rival which is again constitutes a failure in one of its key objectives. ukraine, georgia are recent, but there are several more examples. again, there is a pattern. another infamous vintage example (not quite as old as monroe) is mid-80s afghanistan. detecting nuclear capability has also proven to be an area where the cia repeatedly falls short.

anyway, monroe .....

[asylumseeker]

Yuh right to get kicks off that amusing insertion of the Monroe doctrine ... moreover, the comment above departs from the contemporary record: US foreign policy has de-emphasized "Latin America" for quite some time now.

[elan]

MIss, the CIA doh miss nobody. They'll make you think they miss, but they know exactly what going on. Look how easy building 7 come down on 9/11.

Elan don't get suckered into conspiracy theory - it's an easy trap. Be more critical. I'll post the section from the Rational wiki - http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/9-11_conspiracy_theories

WTC 7 was demolished by order of the WTC's owner

Rebuttal: This comes primarily from two miscommunications. The first was by BBC News, which broadcast an erroneous report that WTC 7 had collapsed while the building could still be seen standing through the window of their New York studio.[5] The second was an evacuation order ("pull it") that went out shortly before the building, badly damaged in the collapse of the main towers and on fire, collapsed of its own accord. According to the The National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) 2006 Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster report, the reasons for the WTC 7 collapse include:
“”Debris from the collapse of WTC 1, which was 370 feet to the south, ignited fires on at least 10 floors in the building at its south and west faces. However, only the fires on some of the lower floors — 7 through 9 and 11 through 13 — burned out of control. These lower-floor fires — which spread and grew because the water supply to the automatic sprinkler system for these floors had failed — were similar to building fires experienced in other tall buildings. The primary and backup water supply to the sprinkler systems for the lower floors relied on the city's water supply, whose lines were damaged by the collapse of WTC 1 and WTC 2. These uncontrolled lower-floor fires eventually spread to the northeast part of WTC 7, where the building's collapse began.

... [T]he thermal expansion of building elements such as floor beams and girders, which occurred at temperatures hundreds of degrees below those typically considered in current practice for fire-resistance ratings; significant magnification of thermal expansion effects due to the long-span floors in the building; connections between structural elements that were designed to resist the vertical forces of gravity, not the thermally induced horizontal or lateral loads; and an overall structural system not designed to prevent fire-induced progressive collapse.[6]

Although it wasn't completely obvious to the untrained eye at the time, WTC 7 had been seriously compromised by a 20-story gash in one corner facing Ground Zero, and by the time the evacuation order was given was visibly sagging. Conspiracy theorists have also tried to claim that "pull" is standard jargon within the demolition industry to fire off demolition charges within the building; demolition experts have denied this; the usual term would be "shoot it" or "blow it."[7]

You can see flashes all over Building 7 as the demo charges fire off
Rebuttal: No you can't. What you see is the window glass popping out as the facade buckles downwards. The sun is momentarily reflected in each pane of glass as it falls.

I swear to you I used to be big into conspiracy theories - but as part of any undergrad or masters you really need to critically assess claims against the evidence. Fact is, you need to assume a number of unlikely events, and contradictory situations in order to justify American involvement in 9/11. Evidence in conspiracy theories are 'cherry picked' to confirm the theory, and the problem with such a conspiracy is that basically any other evidence can be "thrown out" due to the murky nature of any conspiracy. An assessment of the motives, and superior alternatives available, will quickly dispel 9/11 conspiracies.

Why risk a false-flag operation when there are easier, smarter alternatives? Depends on what you perceive the end-game and motives, but most can be discarded.

Dude you seriously fall for that? Those building were imploded. None of those buildings were damage in such a manner to cause them to free falls into itself. You can see where the "popping" is taking place is where the support columns are located. Listen to the first responders recount of what happened. No Jet fuel can cause that steel to bend, melt or break like it did.

The NIST "investigation" was laughable.


<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/z8W-t57xnZg" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/z8W-t57xnZg</a>

[Tiresais]

MIss, the CIA doh miss nobody. They'll make you think they miss, but they know exactly what going on. Look how easy building 7 come down on 9/11.

Elan don't get suckered into conspiracy theory - it's an easy trap. Be more critical. I'll post the section from the Rational wiki - http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/9-11_conspiracy_theories

WTC 7 was demolished by order of the WTC's owner

Rebuttal: This comes primarily from two miscommunications. The first was by BBC News, which broadcast an erroneous report that WTC 7 had collapsed while the building could still be seen standing through the window of their New York studio.[5] The second was an evacuation order ("pull it") that went out shortly before the building, badly damaged in the collapse of the main towers and on fire, collapsed of its own accord. According to the The National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) 2006 Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster report, the reasons for the WTC 7 collapse include:
“”Debris from the collapse of WTC 1, which was 370 feet to the south, ignited fires on at least 10 floors in the building at its south and west faces. However, only the fires on some of the lower floors — 7 through 9 and 11 through 13 — burned out of control. These lower-floor fires — which spread and grew because the water supply to the automatic sprinkler system for these floors had failed — were similar to building fires experienced in other tall buildings. The primary and backup water supply to the sprinkler systems for the lower floors relied on the city's water supply, whose lines were damaged by the collapse of WTC 1 and WTC 2. These uncontrolled lower-floor fires eventually spread to the northeast part of WTC 7, where the building's collapse began.

... [T]he thermal expansion of building elements such as floor beams and girders, which occurred at temperatures hundreds of degrees below those typically considered in current practice for fire-resistance ratings; significant magnification of thermal expansion effects due to the long-span floors in the building; connections between structural elements that were designed to resist the vertical forces of gravity, not the thermally induced horizontal or lateral loads; and an overall structural system not designed to prevent fire-induced progressive collapse.[6]

Although it wasn't completely obvious to the untrained eye at the time, WTC 7 had been seriously compromised by a 20-story gash in one corner facing Ground Zero, and by the time the evacuation order was given was visibly sagging. Conspiracy theorists have also tried to claim that "pull" is standard jargon within the demolition industry to fire off demolition charges within the building; demolition experts have denied this; the usual term would be "shoot it" or "blow it."[7]

You can see flashes all over Building 7 as the demo charges fire off
Rebuttal: No you can't. What you see is the window glass popping out as the facade buckles downwards. The sun is momentarily reflected in each pane of glass as it falls.

I swear to you I used to be big into conspiracy theories - but as part of any undergrad or masters you really need to critically assess claims against the evidence. Fact is, you need to assume a number of unlikely events, and contradictory situations in order to justify American involvement in 9/11. Evidence in conspiracy theories are 'cherry picked' to confirm the theory, and the problem with such a conspiracy is that basically any other evidence can be "thrown out" due to the murky nature of any conspiracy. An assessment of the motives, and superior alternatives available, will quickly dispel 9/11 conspiracies.

Why risk a false-flag operation when there are easier, smarter alternatives? Depends on what you perceive the end-game and motives, but most can be discarded.

Dude you seriously fall for that? Those building were imploded. None of those buildings were damage in such a manner to cause them to free falls into itself. You can see where the "popping" is taking place is where the support columns are located. Listen to the first responders recount of what happened. No Jet fuel can cause that steel to bend, melt or break like it did.

The NIST "investigation" was laughable.

The preparations were made in secret
Rebuttal: This is pretty much completely impossible. Planned implosions require months of preparation, including tearing apart walls to place charges, removing extraneous material from the building, laying miles of carefully measured detonation cord, and the intentional damaging of support columns. Even night work would attract attention from the cleaning crew, as well as the workers who came in the next morning to find walls covered with fresh plaster.
On top of this, the WTC was bombed in 1993, meaning that there were routine checks from bomb squads, including sniffer dogs (though, to be fair, Iron (III) Oxide, and other forms of thermite are likely not regularly checked for by dogs due to the fact that these materials are plentiful in nature and construction). Not only would these explosives have to be laid at night in secret, they would also somehow be able to beat animals specially trained to detect them.

The towers fell in their own footprint; if they collapsed from metal fatigue they should have been all over the place
Rebuttal: They (more or less) did fall symmetrically in their own footprints due to material fatigue at and above the fire and impact floors causing the upper floors to detach and fall through lower undamaged sections, which can be clearly seen until they're obscured by dust and smoke. NIST concluded that:
The collapse was initiated in the impact and fire floors of the WTC towers and nowhere else; and
The time it took for the collapse to initiate (56 minutes for WTC 2 and 102 minutes for WTC 1) was dictated by a) the extent of damage caused by the aircraft impact, and b) the time it took for the fires to reach critical locations and weaken the structure to the point that the towers could not resist the tremendous energy released by the downward movement of the massive top section of the building at and above the fire and impact floors.[8]
Based on observations of the collapses as they happened and hundreds of experts' analysis of the building site and materials, the NIST was able to consider and reject other possible explanations for large buildings collapsing in their own footprints. The first is the theory that damage to the WTC floor systems caused their progressive collapse, known as the "pancake theory."[9] The second is the theory that the Twin Towers were destroyed by controlled detonation. Neither theory matches the observation that each building appeared undamaged except at its top until it collapsed. The NIST concluded that damage to perimeter support columns initiated the detachment of the floors at and above the fire and impact floors, which subsequently fell into and through the towers. The claim that a building damaged by metal fatigue cannot collapse in its own footprint does not square with observations of the collapses as they happened or the conclusions of experts evaluating the effects of physical damage to and the weakening by unusually high temperatures of critical building structures. WTC 1, 2 and 7 were the first and last steel-framed super structures to ever collapse from fire.

You can see flashes all over Building 7 as the demo charges fire off
Rebuttal: No you can't. What you see is the window glass popping out as the facade buckles downwards. The sun is momentarily reflected in each pane of glass as it falls.

Thermite was used to cut structural members in the buildings
Rebuttal: This is based on a few pictures of vertical beams that had been sheared off by recovery workers. Although a thermite reaction is highly exothermic, it is nearly impossible to effectively channel it sideways to cut a vertical beam, since it tends to pour straight down as it burns. Some creative truthers have suggested the use of "thermite straps"; given that thermite is generally a powder delivered from a cone-shaped cup, it's not clear that such a device is even possible, much less practical. This was later amended to thermate, a variation which includes sulfur, and appeared when there were chemicals were found that matched what was found in the debris. However, such claims ignore the natural occurrence of these chemicals, do not match the chemical signatures that were found in the debris, and do not have corresponding traces of two major byproducts from thermate, aluminum oxide[10] and barium nitrate.[11]
Moreover, the thermite reaction is highly exothermic. Supposed evidence of thermite use is the presence of unreacted thermite in the WTC debris. This, however, comes as close to falsifying the hypothesis of thermite use as one can reasonably get: any place containing significant amounts of elemental aluminum and iron oxide (unreacted thermite), yet not far higher amounts of aluminum oxide and elemental iron (the reaction products), can be safely assumed to be not even close to where a thermite reaction recently occurred. This criticism has been "answered" by claiming that the unreacted "nanothermite" is indeed merely a trace residue. But this would require attaching some 100 metric tons[12] of thermite to the WTC buildings' structure, in hundreds or even thousands of small packages, with nobody noticing. And even if that were true, the corresponding amount of reacted thermite has simply failed to turn up. Finding thermite educts yet failing to find the appropriate amount of thermite products turns the supposed "proof" of thermite use into a quite robust refutation of thermite use.
In any case, "unreacted thermite" is composed (in bulk) of elemental aluminum and iron oxide. Commercial aircraft contain enormous amounts of aluminum, and the WTC was a steel-frame building. If an airliner crashes at high speed into a large steel-frame building, causing an enormous explosion, fire, and building collapse, we can expect to find aluminum and iron oxide in the debris, and no thermite charges are required to explain it.
A more recent truther claim is that traces of red-gray chips and iron-rich microspheres in the WTC rubble are best explained by thermite. This is held as their "smoking gun." A study of the dust from Ground Zero contradicts this: "There is no evidence of individual elemental aluminum particles of any size in the red/gray chips..."[13] Essentially, the chips are epoxy resins. Unfortunately, any explosives or their markers were never officially tested.

Explosions coming out the windows of the towers are indications of an explosive demolition
Rebuttal: What happens when you squeeze a concertina? These side-jets of air and dust were not really explosions as such but debris being expelled from the buildings as the floors pancaked on top of each other. There is a lot of air in a quarter-mile-tall office building, and when compressed it has to go somewhere.

Molten steel was found in the basement seven weeks later and jet fuel can't melt steel.
Rebuttal: There is no documented evidence of the presence of actually-melted steel at ground zero. The molten material noted in the 911 Commission report was "slag", not a molten metal. Most of the reports of "molten steel" found at ground zero were merely references to obviously red-hot solid steel. Even if they actually found "molten" metal, aluminum (which the planes were made out of) melts well under the temperature of jet fuel (pure aluminum melts at 660C, jet fuel burns around 980C[14] going up to 2,200C[15][16][17]). In addition, the mix of jet fuel, plastics, rugs, curtains etc. may burn hot enough to melt aluminum.
Additionally, the melting point of steel is within the range of 1425-1540C[18], well outside the temperatures recorded at Ground Zero in the weeks following the attacks. What conspiracy theorists fail to note is that steel thermally expands while it remains strong and thus fire rapidly destroys uninsulated steel structures, and steel begins to lose its structural integrity (and red hot steel itself burns in air or in the presence of steam) at well below its melting point, or 700-820C, well within temperatures recorded at ground zero in the weeks following the attacks). Meanwhile, molten steel is not typically found at the site of buildings that have actually been demolished using "explosives" to sever columns. Also, the first law of thermodynamics prevents even the super hot molten product of thermite charges from remaining molten long after thermite ignition. Therefore, whatever molten materials were observed at ground zero in the weeks following the collapses, that molten material was not originally present and molten at the time of the collapses (it began to melt after the collapses, not before the collapses).
That all being said, a 767 Family plane can carry up to 90,000 Liters of fuel in it's hull. It is estimated the two planes had about 28,000 Liters left in their tanks which is spread all over the hull from the wings to the fuselage (for ballast and balance control). The crash and shredding of the plane hardware caused the fuel to detonate almost instantly. Since it was not a controlled burn it is likely to hit the highest end of the combustion scale at it's core causing simultaneous ignition of anything around that was combustible and causing severe damage to load bearing pillars.

Seriously, they've been debunked. The last quote directly addresses your "wouldn't melt steel" assertion. Moving from that evidence, there's still not a good reason to do it in the first place! What's the motive behind it?

[Tiresais]

Yuh right to get kicks off that amusing insertion of the Monroe doctrine ... moreover, the comment above departs from the contemporary record: US foreign policy has de-emphasized "Latin America" for quite some time now.

Last time I checked it was still on the books - they can "de-emphasize" it sure, but that waxes and wanes with every administration. They're still heavily involved in Venezuela, for example.

[Tiresais]

More broadly to ribbit and Asylum - could you answer my question about what specifically we're arguing about? My point is that the CIA is competent, and your initial points seemed to be that the KSB/MSS were more competent? Just as competent? You've not provided any evidence for that position yet

[asylumseeker]

More broadly to ribbit and Asylum - could you answer my question about what specifically we're arguing about? My point is that the CIA is competent, and your initial points seemed to be that the KSB/MSS were more competent? Just as competent? You've not provided any evidence for that position yet

I've contributed one comment on this thread. It clearly references American foreign policy. It included NO reference to the competence of intelligence agencies. 

[asylumseeker]

Latin America has been America's most important sphere since the Munroe (sic, emphasis asylumseeker) doctrine - they've considered non-European (and later non-anyone) involvement in the continent the highest priority for their security.

Last time I checked it was still on the books - they can "de-emphasize" it sure, but that waxes and wanes with every administration. They're still heavily involved in Venezuela, for example.

Engaging in equivocation I see ...

I'm not going to waste too much time with you today.

In the early days of our republic, the United States made a choice about its relationship with Latin America. President James Monroe, who was also a former Secretary of State, declared that the United States would unilaterally, and as a matter of fact, act as the protector of the region. The doctrine that bears his name asserted our authority to step in and oppose the influence of European powers in Latin America. And throughout our nation’s history, successive presidents have reinforced that doctrine and made a similar choice.

Today, however, we have made a different choice. The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over. (Applause.) The relationship – that’s worth applauding. That’s not a bad thing. (Applause.) The relationship that we seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other American states. It’s about all of our countries viewing one another as equals, sharing responsibilities, cooperating on security issues, and adhering not to doctrine, but to the decisions that we make as partners to advance the values and the interests that we share.

...

Many years ago, the United States dictated a policy that defined the hemisphere for many years after. We’ve moved past that era. And today, we must go even further. All of the things that we’ve talked about today – the future of our democracies, the strength of our democracies, the development of those democracies, the inclusion of all of our people in a system with accountability and without impunity for the defections, our shared prosperity and all that brings us, the education of our children, the future of our planet, our response to climate change – all of these things do not depend on the next administration or the next generation. They depend on us now.

Remarks on U.S. Policy in the Western Hemisphere

http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2013/11/217680.htm

[Tiresais]

Yea that's a fair point- but personally I don't buy Kerry's position on this. Their heavy involvement in Venezuela seems to suggest it's still a priority, and whilst the rhetoric is that the Munroe doctrine is over I doubt very much American can leave the hemisphere to its own devices given its own paranoid. If Trinidad fell to a coup tomorrow you'd get boots on the ground the day after - we matter because we are 60% of the USA's LNG imports. Mexico is a strategic concern today, and heavy cross-boarder flows in government money suggest they too are an important concern. Roughly 20% of the USA's imported crude oil comes from Venezuela (10%), Colombia (4%), Brazil and Ecuador (2%) (rounding errors). For refined petrol, it's roughly 2.9%, 2.7% 2.6%, 1.8% and 1% from Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Peru and Argentina. Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Peru also make up 3.2%, 1.8%, 1.1% and 0.9% of "petrol gas" imports.

Basically I think Latin America is too important for America not to consider a strategic priority. We can disagree on this happily I think.

[asylumseeker]

Let's keep this simple: Latin America is lower on the totempole of priorities than you asserted. Fact is this preceded Kerry. You don't need to believe that, but that's what it is. Facts are policymakers in Latin America don't share your denial. And, fact is that's the case even factoring in economic considerations.

The US is involved in every country on the planet. Mere involvement does not render each involvement a highest order priority.

[Tiresais]

Let's keep this simple: Latin America is lower on the totempole of priorities than you asserted. Fact is this preceded Kerry. You don't need to believe that, but that's what it is. Facts are policymakers in Latin America don't share your denial. And, fact is that's the case even factoring in economic considerations.

The US is involved in every country on the planet. Mere involvement does not render each involvement a highest order priority.

*sigh* I've backed up my position, you have a different position, end of. This is not something that can be definitively answered, especially given the contrast between rhetoric and foreign policy action in America's historical dealings across the world.

[asylumseeker]

Let's keep this simple: Latin America is lower on the totempole of priorities than you asserted. Fact is this preceded Kerry. You don't need to believe that, but that's what it is. Facts are policymakers in Latin America don't share your denial. And, fact is that's the case even factoring in economic considerations.

The US is involved in every country on the planet. Mere involvement does not render each involvement a highest order priority.

*sigh* I've backed up my position, you have a different position, end of. This is not something that can be definitively answered, especially given the contrast between rhetoric and foreign policy action in America's historical dealings across the world.

What have you backed up your position with? Irrelevant economic data assertions and the use of the word "personally" and deployment of the "first person"?

Yea that's a fair point- but personally I don't buy Kerry's position on this. ... I doubt very much American can leave the hemisphere to its own devices given its own paranoid. ...

Basically I think Latin America is too important for America not to consider a strategic priority. We can disagree on this happily I think.

Ignorance is bliss ... you may happily disagree. Willful blindness? It has been definitively answered by the actions of State ... Commece et al rhetoric aside.

As I stated, not going to waste too much time with you today. Over and out.

.