Obama vs. Bush

In the campaign for his re-election, President Obama often points to the fact that the country was in a deep recession when he took office. Obama’s reasoning is that the country was in such a dreadful state in 2008 that it is taking much longer than he originally thought to restore it to prosperity.

It can be instructive to look at the results of the policies of both President Bush and President Obama and compare them side by side. One common criticism of President Obama is his administration’s spending habits. When he recently claimed that “Federal spending since I took office has risen at the slowest pace of any president in almost 60 years,” CNS News and many other outlets fact checked the claim and found it to be untrue. In fact, a chart from USgovernmentspending.com shows that, as a percentage of GDP, President Obama’s spending is at a higher level than at any other time in our history except World War II. While spending did increase slowly under most of George W. Bush’s tenure, it was only in 2008, when TARP was enacted, that it jumped sharply.

A closer look shows that, according to figures from the Tax Policy Center, President Bush ran a deficit for all but the first year of his administration. As a percentage of GDP, Bush’s average deficit was about 2 percent. In dollars, Bush averaged deficits of about $251 billion per year. In contrast, in President Obama’s three years, he has averaged deficits of more than nine percent. In each year of his administration, the federal deficit has been more than $1 trillion. Obama’s average deficit in dollars was $1.33 trillion.

When viewing the data from the Tax Policy Center, it is easy to see why deficits increased so rapidly under President Obama. Even as President Obama was increasing federal spending with his various attempts at stimulus, tax revenues were falling due to the recession. Since spending increased at the same time that the government was taking in less money, the difference had to be made up in borrowing.

Borrowing leads to an increasing federal debt. It is true that the debt increased dramatically under George W. Bush. On January 1, 2001, just before President Bush took office, the federal debt stood at $5.6 trillion according to U.S. Treasury figures. When he left office on January 20, 2009, the debt stood at $10.6 trillion, an increase of almost five trillion dollars. As of June 1, 2012, the federal debt was at $15.7 trillion, an increase of $5.1 trillion. The federal debt has increased by as much under President Obama in three years as it did under Bush in eight. CNS News noted in October 2011 that President Obama had added more debt than all other presidents from George Washington to George Herbert Walker Bush.

The difference is even more stark if the election of 2006 is considered to be the dividing line. In 2006, Democrats took control of both houses of Congress. At the beginning of 2007, as the new Democrats took office, the debt was at $8.6 trillion, which means that three trillion dollars was amassed by President Bush and congressional Republicans. It also means that a staggering $7.1 trillion was borrowed by the Democrats from 2007 through 2012. A chart from USgovernmentspending.com illustrates how radically government spending increased after 2006, when Senator Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi assumed control of Congress.

Democrats argue that deficit spending was needed to combat the 2008 recession, but what did taxpayers get for their money? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment averaged 5.26 percent during the Bush years. The average during the Obama years was 9.26 percent.

Even more telling is the fact that the Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate, the percentage of Americans working, has declined from 67.2 percent in January 2001 to 65.7 in January 2009 and to 63.8 percent in May 2012. According to Multpl.com, the U.S. population increased in each of those years, from 285 million in 2001 to 306 million in 2009. The U.S. population now stands at 313 million according to the U.S. Census. This means that fewer total Americans are working now than when President Obama took office even though the population has increased by 7 million. When President Bush left office 20.1 million Americans were working. Today only 19.9 million are in spite of a population growth of seven million.

Even though the Great Recession officially ended in June 2009, five months into Obama’s presidency and three years ago, the economy and the job markets have not recovered. By many measures, the economy is worse today than it was three years ago. The Federal Reserve announced last week that American wealth had decreased by 40 percent between 2007 and 2011. Home prices, which crashed in 2008, have not recovered and continue to decline in many markets. The Wall St. Journal reports that economists are “increasingly pessimistic” and more are predicting that the stagnant recovery will turn into another recession.

Foreign policy was an area where President Bush faced intense criticism. The 9/11 attacks, along with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, were the defining events of his time in office. President Obama campaigned against the wars and Bush policies such as the detention of terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. Three years later, the prison there remains open. Many leftists decried Bush’s “illegal wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan even though he sought and obtained congressional approval. President Obama did not notify Congress or seek approval before intervening in Libya.

In fact, Obama has quietly adopted a defense policy that is similar to that of President Bush. Perhaps the biggest difference is George W. Bush’s policy of capturing and interrogating terrorists where Obama primarily targets them from afar with drones. Obama’s personal involvement in targeting terrorists is reminiscent of President Lyndon Johnson’s personal involvement in selecting targets – and placing others off limits - during the Vietnam War. Obama did remove all but a token force of U.S. troops from Iraq, but American forces remain in Afghanistan. Perhaps this, along with his reluctance to embrace uprisings in Muslim countries, is why many Arab countries have an even more negative view of the United States under Obama than they did under President Bush according to Pew Global.

With respect to Iran, President Obama’s record is mixed. Obama resisted toughening sanctions on Iran until he was mandated by Congress. Obama also continued Bush’s program of cyber attacks against the Iranian nuclear program, but leaks from his administration detailing these and other intelligence matters have hurt U.S. interests. Breaches of security from the administration may have led to the life sentence for treason of Shakil Afridi, a doctor in Pakistan who helped the CIA determine bin Laden’s location.

Perhaps the greatest missed opportunity of the Obama era was the president’s failure to capitalize on the 2009 Green Revolution uprising in Iran. A secret memo obtained by the Washington Examiner reveals that leaders of the dissidents had requested American help in toppling the regime. President Obama failed to act and, as a result, the Iranian government is growing ever closer to becoming a nuclear power.

President Obama’s greatest triumph, foreign policy or domestic, was undoubtedly the killing of Osama bin Laden, yet if Obama had his way the programs that generated much of the intelligence that led to bin Laden’s whereabouts would have been closed down years ago. As Real Clear Politics explains, the enhanced interrogation techniques used during the Bush Administration uncovered much of the intelligence that led to bin Laden. Obama should get credit for issuing the order to attack, but President Bush should also get credit for making the attack possible.

Liberals charge that Bush’s defense and war spending is what led to the massive federal debt. A chart from USgovernmentspending.com does show that defense spending in total dollars increased under President Bush, but it has also continued to increase under President Obama. However, between 2002 and 2008, defense spending as a percentage of GDP remained between four and five percent under President Bush. Total defense dollars and defense spending as a percentage of GDP both increased under President Obama. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, defense spending makes up 20 percent of the federal budget and is dwarfed by Social Security, Medicare, other safety net programs and interest on the federal debt, which together account for 60 percent of the budget.

As Americans head to the polls this November, President Obama is unlikely to ask, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” as President Reagan famously did in 1984. Three years after the official end of the Great Recession, President Obama and his policies deserve the blame for the lack of recovery. Obama has yet to offer any new tactic that has not been tried previously without success. On foreign policy, Obama’s position has evolved, but he has displayed little desire to take strong and decisive action, resulting in many missed opportunities.

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ACLU: Ron Paul is more progressive than Obama

Ron Paul supporters claim that Rep. Paul is the only candidate who represents a change from what they see as the almost identical policies of Presidents Obama and Bush. A closer look reveals that just the opposite is true. Not only are the policies of President Obama starkly different from those of President Bush on most issues, but the platform of Rep. Paul is almost identical to that of President Obama in many key areas. A new report card by the American Civil Liberties Union, Liberty Watch 2012, ranks Paul higher than Obama on a host of progressive and anti-war issues.

The area where President Obama and Ron Paul are the most alike is on foreign policy. Both seem to share the conviction that the United States is to blame for many of the world’s problems. Obama said in 2009 that “America has shown arrogance.” In many other statements, he has made clear his belief that the U.S. does not have the moral authority to lead the world. In a similar vein, Ron Paul stated in a 2007 presidential debate on Fox News that the 9/11 attacks were “blowback” from U.S. interference in Middle Eastern politics.

Both Paul and Obama opposed the War on Terror. In 2001, Paul voted for the Authorization to Use Military Force (H.J.R. 64) in Afghanistan, but the next year he voted against the authorization to use force against Iraq (H.J.R. 114). More recently, Paul has called for an end to U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and would like to have the U.S. exit from the U.N.

For his part, President Obama also originally supported the war in Afghanistan while opposing the war in Iraq. In 2002, just prior to the congressional vote on Iraq, in a video on CNS News Obama said, “… After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again. I don't oppose all wars.  ... What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.”

A central part of Obama’s 2008 platform was the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. At the end of 2011, the last U.S. troops left Iraq on Obama’s orders. He is currently withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan with the last American soldier scheduled to leave in 2014 according to the New York Times. At the same time, Obama has stepped up drone attacks on terrorists, a policy which Ron Paul has criticized.

On the issue of gay rights, Ron Paul also shares similarities with President Obama. Paul was not in Congress in 1996 when Georgia’s Bob Barr (then a Republican, but now a Libertarian) sponsored the Defense of Marriage Act and President Clinton signed it into law. He did state on Fox News that he opposes a federal marriage amendment on the grounds that marriage is a religious and state issue and that the federal government should not be involved, although he did co-sponsor the Marriage Protection Act, which never became law. Paul was one of only 15 Republicans to vote for the repeal of “Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell.”

President Obama has called the Defense of Marriage Act “unconstitutional” and instructed Attorney General Holder not to defend the law against legal challenges. Obama signed the repeal of “Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell” into law, and under his authority the Pentagon permitted military chaplains to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies. Hillary Clinton, Obama’s Secretary of State has said that U.S. policy is that “gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.”

On a number of issues, Ron Paul is even farther to the left than President Obama. President Obama recently rebuffed a petition to legalize marijuana. Ron Paul advocates an end to the drug war, which he claims is rooted in racism. In a 2011 debate on Fox News, Paul also defended the legalization of prostitution. Paul would end all foreign aid. Paul voted against the PATRIOT Act. President Obama reauthorized the law in May 2011.

Ron Paul has criticized President Obama for the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen who was a senior recruiter and theological leader of al Qaeda. Paul believes that Awlaki should have been given due process, even though he was beyond the reach of the American legal system in Yemen when he was killed in 2011.

Paul is also the only candidate of either party who does not believe that Iran’s nuclear program poses a threat to world peace. On December 30, 2011, Paul told ABC News that “they [the Iranians] don’t threaten our national security,” in spite of the recent revelations of an Iranian plot to plant a bomb in a Washington, D.C. restaurant. President Obama has called a nuclear Iran “unacceptable” and pursued sanctions as a means of isolating that country. Ron Paul calls these sanctions an “act of war.”

Rep. Paul and President Obama travel on two different ideological roads, but they often reach the same destination. Often Paul is farther down the road than Obama. Perhaps that explains why more members of Occupy Atlanta favored Ron Paul than Obama.

 

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The Ron Paul phenomenon

Ron Paul is beginning to frighten me.

To be totally accurate, it isn’t just Dr. Paul that frightens me, but his followers as well.  The relationship between Ron Paul and his followers seems to be almost unique in modern American politics.  Dr. Paul’s followers, often referred to as “Paulestinians” by talk show host Michael Medved (listen to Medved on Atlanta’s AM-920 WGKA), are fiercely loyal to their candidate, which explains why Paul often wins straw polls.  These contests are not normal elections, but consist of activists who often have to pay or go out of their way to take part.  Paul’s supporters, while small in number, are fully dedicated to Paul’s success.

Ron Paul is in the Republican Party, but is not of it.  He was originally sent to Congress as a Republican, but later left the party to run for president as a Libertarian in 1988.  He was re-elected to Congress as a Republican in 1996 and has run for president twice, both times as a Republican, since then.  When he failed to win the Republican nomination in 2008, Paul did not support John McCain.  Instead, he endorsed Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party candidate.

Most of his supporters do not seem to consider themselves Republicans either.  In fact, the majority of Ron Paul supporters that I have come in contact with see both major political parties as two sides of the same coin.  Recently, a Ron Paul supporter told me that it was her opinion that Obama was “Bush’s third term.”  This is not the view of a majority of the Americans regardless of their party affiliation.

Many of the other views of Paul and his disciples are not shared by other Americans.  Paul criticized President Obama for ordering the raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout and his foreign policy platform smacks of isolationism.  He has favored extending friendship to Iran, rather than threatening sanctions or attacks to halt Iran’s nuclear program.

Paul claims to be for “nonintervention” rather than isolationism.  In a speech posted on Youtube, Paul explains that this means he is for trade and talk between countries, rather than for sealing the country off from other nations.  He doesn’t explain how he would protect Americans abroad (or at home for that matter) without intervening militarily against foreign threats from people who have no such compunctions about using military force against Americans.

Many Ron Paul supporters also seem to be more at home with members of the Occupy Wall Street movement than with the Tea Party.  When I visited Occupy Atlanta last October, more occupiers professed an admiration for Ron Paul than any other presidential candidate, including Barack Obama.  Paul supporters are often quick to parrot liberal criticism of the Tea Party and the Koch brothers, even though Paul is widely considered to be one of the inspirations of the Tea Party movement.

Paul’s most vocal supporters seem willing and even eager to believe the most outlandish conspiracy theories.  Ron Paul supporters have argued with me that Israelis are not really Jewish, that FEMA is secretly building concentration camps around the country, and that American soldiers are required to take an oath to kill their own families if ordered to do so.  Many are believers in the 9/11 truther and birther movements as well.  These are only a few of the many paranoid fantasies that Ron Paul supporters have supported in dialogues with me.  The only requirement seems to be that the conspiracy must be anti-American and anti-Israeli.

Even Paul himself has seemed to endorse conspiracy theories as well.  He says at a gathering recorded and posted on Youtube that the government investigation of the attacks was “a cover-up, basically.”  As late as 2007, Paul told liveleak.com that he believed that there was a cover-up of 9/11, even though he denied being a truther.  In an article from his newsletter posted on ConservativeNetwork.com, Paul shared “research” that speculated that the U.S. government created the AIDS virus.

Paul also has a history of racist statements in his newsletters.  I could find no statement where Paul has renounced the racist statements in his newsletters or the anti-Semitic comments of his supporters that are common on websites dedicated to Paul.  While Paul cannot be held responsible for the behavior of his supporters, there is evidence that he authored or had direct knowledge of the contents of his newsletters.  When asked to condemn the behavior of his supporters by “American Spectator” blogger Jeffrey Lord, he failed to do so.  He is, however, on record as saying that “the philosophy of white supremacy is wrong and immoral” in an interview posted on Youtube.

Paul and his supporters both seem to agree that he is the only candidate who is worthy successor to the Founding Fathers as an upholder of the Constitution, yet they both misunderstand American history.  For instance, Paul criticizes the Federal Reserve as unconstitutional, but fails to note that Congress established a central bank, the Bank of the United States, in 1791.  This was only three years after the Constitution was ratified. 

Likewise, Paul criticizes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as unconstitutional.  He fails to note, however, that Article I Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to “punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations,” such as genocides and crimes against humanity.  Military interventions are not new.  According to “the Savage Wars of Peace,” U.S. Marines landed abroad 180 times between 1800 and 1934, with one of the first actions, the war against the Barbary pirates, occurring during Thomas Jefferson’s administration in 1801.

As disturbing as their political beliefs is the ardor with which Paul’s disciples support their man.  Their fervor approaches the point of becoming a cult of personality.  They seem to see him as a Messiah-figure.  Many unabashedly pronounce their belief that Ron Paul is the only hope for the country and the world.  The only thing that comes close in recent U.S. history is the leftist adoration of Barack Obama prior to the 2008 election. 

When others fail to see the world as the Paulestinians do, they are denounced as “sheeple,” unthinking people who follow the crowd and do what they are told.  When presented with evidence contrary to their beliefs, they cite a conspiracy to cover up the “truth” (even though Paul hasn’t been silenced over his long career and the conspiracy sites are still up).  When Ron Paul suffers an electoral defeat, it is because he was ignored by the media, not because his ideas only appeal to a small, vocal minority.  (In 2008, he won less than three percent of the Republican primary votes in Georgia and less than two percent of delegates nationally.)

Admittedly, there are some casual supporters of Paul.  These are people who may have heard him in the debates and like his fiscal policies, without knowing the details of the man, his platform and his disciples.  Their existence is illustrated by Paul’s recent rise in the polls as Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich faltered.  These people have not yet been swept up into the world of paranoid fantasies that the Paulestinians inhabit.  Some will.  Others will take a closer look at the candidate and reject him as they have rejected other Republicans this primary season.

Nevertheless, if, by some miracle, Ron Paul became the Republican candidate in 2012, I would support him.  In spite of the good doctor’s foreign policy failings and questionable attitudes about race, his economic policies would make him a better president than Barack Obama…  but just barely.

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Why Ron Paul can’t win

Ron Paul is a frequent winner of straw polls and has a loyal following among libertarians. In spite of winning these polls, Paul has no chance of winning the Republican nomination. This is not because of a Republican or media (or Bilderberger or Illuminati or any other) conspiracy. The reason lies in Paul’s political beliefs and the nature of the straw polls that he wins.

Paul, a Republican congressman representing a Texas house district, is not a normal Republican. Between terms in Congress as a Republican, he ran for president as a Libertarian Party candidate. Even today, his platform is starkly different than those of other Republicans.

One of the issues where this is most apparent is drug legalization. Ron Paul has supported the decriminalization of narcotics and an end to the drug war. While the American public is almost evenly split on the issue of marijuana legalization according to an October 2011 Gallup poll, only 35 percent of Republicans are in favor. The fact that Paul is out of step with Republican voters hurts him as a candidate in a Republican primary.

While Paul opposes attempts to redefine traditional marriage, he opposes a federal marriage amendment, which is the only way to prevent the courts from imposing same-sex marriage. As with drug legalization, this is an issue on which the American public is divided according to a recent Associated Press poll, but support for traditional marriage is stronger among Republicans and conservatives. When voters have had a chance to vote on definition of marriage laws or amendments, they often pass by a large margin. Georgia voters approved a marriage amendment with 76 percent in favor in 2004.

On other issues Paul is similarly out of step. After U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, Paul said in an interview on Iowa’s WHO radio that he would not have ordered the raid. As reported by ABC News, Paul said that the raid was “absolutely not necessary” and did not reflect “respect for the rule of law and world law, international law.” Paul said that he would have favored cooperation with Pakistan to arrest bin Laden.

Paul’s position again conflicted with the beliefs of most Americans. According to a Washington Post/Pew poll, by a margin of 34-8 percent most Americans believed that Pakistan had done more to hurt U.S. efforts to find bin Laden than to help. Seventy-two percent of Americans felt relieved that bin Laden was dead. Bin Laden’s death made 60 percent of Americans feel proud and 58 percent felt happy. These percentages are probably even higher among Republicans.

Even more current and troubling to most Americans is Paul’s position on Iran. CNS News reports that Paul said, “For them [Iran] to be a threat to us or to anybody in the region, I think it’s just blown out of proportion.” Paul opposes sanctions or military action against Iran and says that the U.S. should offer friendship instead, a position closer to that of Barack Obama than his fellow Republicans.

In contrast, a UPI poll released on November 12 shows that 50 percent of Americans support U.S. military action against Iran and 57 percent support an Israeli attack on Iran. According to a CBS/Global Research poll, only 17 percent of Americans do not believe that Iran poses a threat.

As the polls were released, the International Atomic Energy Agency released a report that confirms that the Iranian nuclear program is focused on developing weapons rather than nuclear power for peaceful purposes. Coming on the heels of the FBI’s disruption of an Iranian assassination plot in Washington, D.C. in October, it is likely that many more Americans are coming to see Iran as a dangerous threat that will not respond to anything short of military action.

On the other hand, Paul’s long-time advocacy of government spending cuts is now being supported by a majority of Americans according to Gallup and there are signs that his desire to bring back the gold standard is gaining support as well. A Rasmussen poll from October surprisingly showed that 44 percent of Americans favored the gold standard compared to 28 percent opposed. When the question was phrased to say that the gold standard would reduce the powers of “bankers and the political class,” support increased to 57 percent and opposition dropped to 19 percent.

Rep. Paul’s call to “end the Fed” may be gaining support, but is still a minority position. A Bloomberg poll from December 2010 showed that only 16 percent wanted to abolish the Federal Reserve. That number was twice the eight percent who favored abolishing the Fed in October of that year. Even if most Americans don’t favor shutting down the Federal Reserve, 39 percent did want to make it more accountable and only 37 percent favored the current model with an independent Fed.

Ron Paul’s economic policies are finding favor in the current climate of massive government spending and deficits. On domestic issues and foreign policy, however, he is out of step with most Americans and even more out-of-step with Republicans, whom he must win over to reach the general election. Consequently, he stays below ten percent according to the Real Clear Politics average of polls, even as he wins unscientific straw polls where his supporters turn out in droves. In Georgia polls, Paul remains similarly in the single digits, near his under-three percent finish in Georgia’s 2008 primary election.

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More 9/11 myths

In memory of the victims of the 9/11 attacks and the casualties in the war against the terrorists since then, the Atlanta Conservative Examiner is addressing some of the conspiracies surrounding 9/11 in the hope that sanity will prevail and that Americans can once against unite against a very real and common enemy instead of wasting time and resources chasing phantoms. Six Georgians died in the attacks, eight Georgians died in Afghanistan and 124 Georgians were killed in Iraq. Let us honor their memory and the sacrifice of the thousands of other Americans and Georgians who served or were wounded in action by fighting the real enemy: Al Qaeda and radical Islam.

After the recent Atlanta Conservative Examiner article, “the truth about the September 11 attacks,” there was a lot of feedback, both from conspiracy believers and skeptics. Conspiracy believers pointed out several conspiracies that were not addressed in the article. Some of these other theories and claims will be addressed here.

A potentially explosive claim made by one conspiracy site is that the cockpit door on American 77, the flight that hit the Pentagon, was monitored on the flight data recorder and that this data showed the door was never opened. The site claims that the FDR data was obtained from the NTSB under the Freedom of Information Act and that the cockpit door parameter shows that the door did not open in flight. The site claims that this information was discovered eight years after the fact by an Australian researcher.

This claim cannot be closely examined because the link on the site’s page that purports to allow a download of the FDR data is a dead link. As a professional pilot, I can say that it is unlikely that the cockpit door was monitored on the FDR. Prior to 9/11, cockpit doors were not hardened as they are today and it is unlikely that they were monitored.

An acquaintance who worked in the training department at Delta Air Lines before and after 9/11 agrees that cockpit doors were probably not monitored. He suspects that the monitoring parameter on the FDR, if it actually existed at all, may have represented an electric mechanism that allowed the pilots to unlock the cockpit door without getting out of their seats. This mechanism could be monitored, but the door could also be opened manually.

He also notes that the sound of the door opening might have been picked up on the cockpit voice recorder. Unfortunately, CVRs only record for about 30 minutes. Additionally, according to the NTSB report, the CVR was extensively damaged and the magnetic tape inside was “fused into a solid block of charred plastic.” A photo of the CVR shows the damage from the crash.

Another claim is that Marvin Bush, brother to President Bush, was in charge of security at the World Trade Center on 9/11. This claim is easily disproved. The real head of security for the WTC was John O’Neill, a retired FBI agent. O’Neill was killed in the attacks. Ultimately, the WTC was owned by the Port Authority of N.Y. and N.J. so the Port Authority Police were responsible for security.

911myths.com goes further to debunk the Marvin Bush claim. Bush’s company, Securacom (later called Stratesec), did have a contract to help

install security systems in the WTC after the 1993 bombing. This contract ended in 1998 according the company’s SEC filings. Bush left the company in 2000, and despite claims to the contrary, there is no evidence that Wirt Walker, the firm’s current head, is a Bush relative. Even if Bush’s company had been actively working at the WTC on 9/11, it would be irrelevant since the towers were attacked from the outside by airliners. Additionally, the mere presence of a Bush family member is not evidence of any crime or conspiracy.

The conpiricists charge that the WTC must have been destroyed by explosive charges, claiming that it was the first time in history that a steel building collapsed from a fire. In particular, they point to Building 7, which was not struck by an airliner, and the fact that the buildings seemed to fall straight down, rather than to the side. In reality, no steel skyscraper had ever been hit by an airliner before. No steel-framed buildings had ever been left to burn for six hours without firefighting.

Charles Zimmerman, a Ga. Tech educated Structural Engineer, explains what happened: “Under normal temperatures, the bolted connections of the beams to girders or columns are simple shear connections and do not induce any significant tension in the bolts. However, under much higher sustained temperatures, the steel beams begin to sag like a cable, which introduces tension forces into the bolts in addition to the shear forces for which they were designed, causing brittle failures of the connections. If it is a girder connection to a column, it may cause an entire bay of floor beams to collapse onto the next lower level. The impact load of a floor collapsing onto the floor below is a dynamic load and is a much greater force than just its weight, because it is a moving load. This creates a collapse mechanism called "pancaking" which can continue all the way down the building with one floor collapsing onto the floor below, causing it to collapse, and so forth. While the loss of floors at some levels of a building reduces loads on the columns that once supported them, it also increases their unbraced lengths, which weakens their strength and their ability to support the floors above the removed floors. So the columns begin to fail at the levels [where] floors are lost and the entire building above begins to collapse.”

Zimmerman continues: “Where the fire was located on WTC 7, there were a number of collection girders and trusses to allow more open spaces uninterrupted by columns at lower levels, such that the failure of one of these collection elements due to the heat of the fire made it more vulnerable to progressive collapse. The Murrah Building in Oklahoma City was likewise vulnerable to progressive collapse for this reason, but from blast rather than fire loads.”

With respect to the failure of the Air Force to intercept the airliners, Col. Marc Sasseville, one of the first fighter pilots launched on 9/11, recently told his story in the Wall Street Journal. Sasseville was given the authority to shoot down threatening aircraft. The problem was that his aircraft, launched on short notice, had no missiles and carried only training ammunition. Sasseville decided that if he had to, he would try to disable a hijacked aircraft by crashing his fighter into it.

Additionally, there was not enough time to perform an intercept in most cases. According to the 9/11 Commission report (pp.32-33), in the case of American Flight 11, the first place to be hijacked and the first to crash into the WTC, there were only 27 minutes between the notification of the hijacking and the crash. United Flight 75, the second plane to hit the WTC, crashed 11 minutes after the hijacking was discovered. American Flight 77 went the longest between discovery of the hijacking and crashing at 32 minutes, but NEADS (Northeast Air Defense Sector) was only notified by the FAA three minutes prior to the crash at the Pentagon. United Flight 93 was discovered to have been hijacked 29 minutes before it crashed. NEADS was not notified by the FAA until after the crash. On all except UAL 175, the transponders were turned off by the hijackers, making it more difficult to track the planes. On UAL 175, the hijackers evidently tried to turn off the transponder, but only succeeded in changing it to a different code.

Another claim made on some sites is that the phone calls from the hijacked aircraft could not have happened because that technology had not been invented on 9/11. The reality is that phones were installed on airliners as early as the 1980s. As the planes flew lower to approach their targets, even personal cell phones may been able to make calls.

There are further holes in the 9/11 conspiracies as well. Apparently no one has developed a rational motive for anyone except al Qaeda to have carried out the attacks. If it was as an excuse to attack Iraq, then why blame Osama bin Laden, attack Afghanistan, and then wait 18 months to invade Iraq? Claims that it was to provide a rationale for cracking down on civil liberties or installing a U.S. dictatorship have been proven false by events. Likewise, no New World Order has arisen from the ashes of the WTC. Theories about Israel’s involvement seem similarly fanciful.

Osama bin Laden admitted to the attacks in a video message in 2004. Al Qaeda had a history of attacking American targets that included the 1993 WTC bombing, bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000. In a prelude to the 9/11 attacks, al Qaeda agents assassinated Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance, on September 9, 2001. This was meant to enable the Taliban to crush the Northern Alliance and prevent U.S. aid against the Afghan overlords. Conpiricists typically ignore these facts or else claim that they are hoaxes, as they do to anything that does not fit their narrow worldview.

Perhaps the biggest flaw in the reasoning of the conpiricists is the existence of the conspiracies themselves. Would a government or entity that would sacrifice 3,000 people allow its actions to be made public? It seems more likely that such an organization would squelch the publication of books and movies that exposed their nefarious deeds and make the authors quietly disappear. Perhaps Alex Jones and his fellow conspiracy mongers should watch out.

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Ten years after 9/11, US is winning war on terror

Ten years after the September 11 attacks, the U.S. is winning the war on terror. In the fevered days after the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, most Americans were holding their breath, waiting for the next explosions. They never came.

It was not because al Qaeda did not try. Al Qaeda was successful in launching attacks in other countries. The 2002 bombing of a nightclub in Bali killed 180 people. In 2003, al Qaeda bombs killed 58 and wounded 750 in Istanbul. In 2004, a series of bombs on commuter trains in Madrid killed 190 and wounded 2,000. The 2005 attack on the London subway killed 56.

There have been numerous terror plots disrupted by U.S. and allied intelligence agencies. By one count, 39 al Qaeda plots have been foiled in the United States since September 11. Some of these plots were high profile such as the “shoe bomber,” Richard Reid, in December 2001 or the “underwear bomber,” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, in December 2009. Most frequent fliers will recall the liquid bomb plot against airliners from August 2006 since it marked the beginning of the ban on all but the smallest liquids for airline travelers.

Fewer will remember the cargo bomb plot disrupted less than a year ago in October 2010 in which terrorists tried to ship bomb-laden packages on cargo planes. There were also plots to attack soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J. in May 2007, to blow up fuel tanks at Kennedy airport in June 2007, and attempted car bombings in Times Square in May 2010 and at a Portland, Ore. Christmas tree lighting in November 2010. Miraculously all of these attempted terror attacks were thwarted.

The fact that the terrorists have not struck America again is largely due the valor and sacrifice of American and allied soldiers, sailors, airmen, and intelligence officers. In addition to freeing two countries, they have decimated al Qaeda’s leadership beginning with beginning with Mohammed Atef, an al Qaeda lieutenant killed in Afghanistan in November 2001. September 11 plotters Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were captured in Pakistan. Attacks on al Qaeda’s command and control culminated in the death of Osama bin Laden himself in Pakistan on May 1, 2011.

All of this was accomplished without the loss of civil liberties that many feared. The much maligned PATRIOT Act was reauthorized in 2005 and 2011 with bipartisan votes. The act was amended to assuage concerns about civil liberties. There have been no pogroms or harassment of American Muslims. The omnipresent and rabid criticism of President Bush is evidence that dissent was not crushed. Newspaper coverage of classified programs shows the lack of censorship. Unlike during the Civil War, habeas corpus was not suspended. With the exception of increased screenings at airports, there has been little change for most Americans. Even the soldiers armed with automatic weapons that were present at airports after the September 11 attacks are long gone.

President Bush deserves credit for bringing the nation together in the days after September 11. President Bush’s steadfastness in the darkest days of the war, when even members of his own party were calling for a withdrawal from Iraq, eventually led to the surge that pacified the country. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq removed Saddam Hussein, a mass murderer and sponsor of terrorism, and may have ultimately helped to fuel the Arab Spring uprisings.

President Obama also deserves credit for his part in the war on terror. Obama ordered the attack on Osama bin Laden and ordered his own surge in Afghanistan and stepped up drone attacks on fighters in Pakistan. Obama also deserves credit for reneging on his campaign promise for a precipitous pullout from Iraq.

The new face of terror is the homegrown terrorist. Several recent terror attacks have been carried out or attempted by local Muslims who became radicalized over the internet without planning or direction by al Qaeda leaders. Although several al Qaeda agents and cells had been discovered earlier, Abu Nidal Hasan’s Fort Hood rampage in November 2009 was the first high-profile terror attack by a homegrown radical. Earlier that year, members of a terror cell in North Carolina were accused of plotting attacks.

Georgia is not without radicals. In 2009, two Georgia Tech students, Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee were convicted of making videos to scout locations for terror attacks. Sadequee had been previously arrested in Sarajevo in 2005 with plastic explosives and bomb making materials as part of “al Qaeda in Europe.” Earlier this year, a Marietta woman admitted mailing a bloody pig foot and anti-Semitic ramblings to New York congressman Peter King.

The Augusta Chronicle recently reported that in the ten years since September 11, $460 million has been spent protecting Georgia from terrorists. Half of this money has been spent in Atlanta where the state capitol and the international airport make inviting targets. This amount, spent over ten years, represents less than six percent of the amount that President Obama and the Democrats spent in one year on their stimulus bill. It was only 42 percent of Georgia’s $1.08 billion share of the stimulus money. The homeland security money was arguably a much better investment.

Although the war on terror will likely continue for the foreseeable future, it is evident that the United States is winning. In spite of numerous attempts, al Qaeda has not been able to attack America in ten years and most of al Qaeda’s senior leadership is either dead or imprisoned. American freedoms and civil liberties have been preserved.

The constantly changing face of terrorism means that there are constant new threats, from car bombs to sniper attacks to nuclear weapons. Threats come of lone wolves hiding in American society as well as state sponsored terror groups. Perhaps the biggest danger – and irony - is that the war on terror has been so successful that most Americans no longer feel threatened.

 

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The truth about the September 11 attacks

As the U.S. approaches the tenth anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001, it is time to put to rest the myriad of conspiracy theories that have surrounded both the attacks and the U.S. response. Radicals from both the extreme right and left have sought to propagate these theories in order to further their own aims. Not coincidentally, many of these conpiricists have also made handsome profits from books and films that purport to dispel the lies about 9/11.

The attacks, which were the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor, resulted in the deaths of 2,996 people. Several Georgians were also killed in the attacks. Maynard Spence of Douglasville, Harshad Thatte of Norcross, Adam White of Atlanta, and Claude Michael Gann of Roswell died in the World Trade Center. Leslie Whittington of Atlanta died when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. U.S. Army Maj. Steve Long of Georgia died in the Pentagon.

Five years after the attacks, Popular Mechanics released a definitive analysis of many of the conspiracy claims. Much of the information in the book “Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up To Hard Facts” is now available for free online at PopularMechanics.com. The website 911myths.com also debunks many of the conspiracy theories around the attacks.

The Popular Mechanics report notes that only 14 American fighter planes were on alert in the 48 contiguous states on the morning of September 11. Further, intercepts of civilian aircraft were not common for air defense fighters. In the decade before the attacks, the one and only civilian aircraft intercepted by fighters in U.S. airspace was the Learjet carrying golfer Payne Stewart, which flew uncontrolled from Florida to South Dakota before crashing after the cabin depressurized. PM reports that it took an F-16 one hour and 22 minutes to make the intercept.

In answer to the skeptics’ claim that the damage to the World Trade Center buildings was too widespread to be caused by a single aircraft strike on each tower, PM responds that thousands of pounds of jet fuel atomized on impact and traveled throughout the buildings. The burning fuel spread flames through elevator and utility shafts. Flames reportedly exploded through the elevator doors in the lobby moments after impact. The 1500 degree flames from burning jet fuel was not strong enough melt steel, but it did reduce the steel frames of the towers to about ten percent of their normal strength.

PM notes that at least one conspiracy site cropped seismology charts to support the notion that controlled demolitions toppled the towers. The full charts clearly show the impacts of both aircraft followed by the collapse of the towers. Extensive damage to surrounding buildings also lends credence to the fact that the collapse of the towers was a chaotic, catastrophic event.

Conspiracy theorists have charged that the Pentagon was hit by a missile rather than an airplane, citing the small size of the hole in the wall. PM points out that both wings of the aircraft were sheared off by the impact and that the 75 foot wide hole that is consistent with the size of the airliner’s fuselage. A separate 12 foot hole was likely made by the landing gear.

In contrast with conspiracy claims that no aircraft wreckage was recovered at the Pentagon, there are both photos and eyewitness accounts of

aircraft wreckage. Allyn Kilsheimer, a structural engineer and blast expert who arrived on scene shortly after the crash, is quoted in the PM article, “I picked up parts of the plane with the airline markings on them. I held in my hand the tail section of the plane, and I found the black box. I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?"

In Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 crashed, a white jet reported in the area is revealed to be a business jet that was descending into nearby Johnstown. Air traffic control asked the jet’s pilots to investigate Flight 93 and they subsequently orbited the crash site at 1500 feet.

PM reports that the debris pattern of the Flight 93 crash site is consistent with a surface impact given the flight path and wind direction at the time of the crash. Lighter debris was thrown up and carried downwind for several miles. Similarly, an engine was found 300 yards downrange. This is consistent with the mass and velocity of the engine at impact.

Reports on a conspiracy radio show that claimed an F-16 pilot shot the airliner down were revealed to be lies. Ed Jacoby, director of the New York State Emergency Management Office, was with the pilot reported to have fired the missiles at Flight 93. The F-16 and pilot were tasked to return Jacoby from a meeting in Montana to Albany, N.Y. where he could coordinate the emergency services response to the attacks. Jacoby categorically denies that the pilot, Lt. Col. Rick Gibney, shot down Flight 93.

An examination of the timing of the attacks backs up Jacoby’s story. The North Dakota Air National Guard operated F-16Bs. The straight-line distance between Bozeman, Mt. and Albany, N.Y. is 1,857 miles. Using the fighter’s top speed listed on the plane’s Air Force fact sheet, 1,345 mph, the trip would take less than an hour and a half, which would barely give Gibney time to get in position to shoot down Flight 93 at 10:03 a.m. if he took off from Bozeman immediately after American Flight 11 crashed into the WTC at 8:46 a.m. Eastern Time. But, according to the Air Force, the F-16B’s range is only 1,407 miles and that range could only be achieved by flying at slower speeds. It is likely that Gibney had to rendezvous with an aerial tanker, which would further slow down the flight to Albany. It is also highly unlikely that Gibney was ready to launch immediately after the first WTC attack. In fact, Gibney first had to fly from his base at Fargo, N.D. to Bozeman to pick up Jacoby. There is simply no way he could have been over Pennsylvania in time to shoot down Flight 93.

Logically, the conspiracy theories do not add up. An obvious reason is that the government and the military were clearly caught by surprise. According to the official timeline on National911Memorial.org, President Bush, who was visiting students at a Florida elementary school, was notified that a plane had crashed into the WTC at 8:50 a.m., four minutes after American Flight 11, the first hijacked airliner, had crashed. United Flight 175 crashed at 9:03 a.m. and the president was notified two minutes later.

The Secret Service did not evacuate Vice President Cheney from the White House to a secure bunker until 9:30, one minute before American Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. The nationwide ground stop for all flights was issued at 9:42 a.m. and the White House and Capitol were evacuated at 9:45, an hour after the attacks began. The last commercial flight in U.S. airspace did not land until 12:16 p.m.

In the years after the attacks, President Bush faced much criticism for his slow reaction to the attacks. If the U.S. government were complicit in the attacks, the reaction of all levels of government, including President Bush, would have been much more swift and certain. When the president left Florida aboard Air Force One, he was taken to Offutt AFB in Nebraska after a stop in Louisiana. The president’s location was kept secret for much of the day due to an anonymous phone call that was interpreted as a threat against Air Force One. President Bush did not make his memorable address to the nation until later that night.

Equally illogical is the culprit behind the 9/11 attacks. If, as some charge, the attacks were a smokescreen to justify an invasion of Iraq, then why implicate Osama bin Laden, a Saudi exile that few had ever heard of, and the Afghan Taliban? If Iraq were truly the target of the conspirators, it seems that the evidence would have pointed toward Saddam Hussein, a known supporter of terrorists. As it was, the invasion of Iraq did not take place until March 19, 2003, a year and a half after September 11.

Finally, 9/11 conspiracy theories can be compared to a real government conspiracy, Operation Fast and Furious. Fast and Furious was an operation carried out by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, ostensibly to track the smuggling of weapons to Mexico. In reality, ATF allowed criminals to make “straw purchases” of thousands of weapons, which were then taken to Mexico where ATF lost the trail. Weapons from the program were used to murder a U.S. Border Patrol agent in December 2010.

In contrast with 9/11 conspiracies, there is ample evidence of the government’s culpability in Fast and Furious. Whistleblowers came forward almost immediately and a congressional investigation was begun. If government workers objected to the cover-up of one death in Fast and Furious enough to risk their jobs to bring out the truth, it is likely that a conspiracy large enough to cover-up the hijackings of four airliners and that resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians would also generate a large number of whistleblowers seeking justice. No whistleblowers have come forward and investigations are limited to members of the political fringe such as professional conspiracy monger Alex Jones and Cynthia McKinney, a former Georgia congresswoman turned Green Party presidential candidate who is perhaps best remembered for striking a U.S. Capitol police officer.

In truth, there was a conspiracy around the September 11 attacks. It was conspiracy between Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorists. The

very date of the attacks, September 11, is prominent in Muslim history as the anniversary of a catastrophic defeat of the Turks outside the gates of Vienna, Austria in 1683. The defeat ended Turkish dreams of controlling Europe and marked the beginning of the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Bin Laden and his zealots hoped that September 11, 2001 would be the beginning of an Islamic jihad to throw Americans and other westerners out of Muslim lands as a first step in establishing a worldwide Islamic caliphate.

 

Note:  With the exception of the 9/11 memorial engraving, the photos are from the September 11, 2001 Attacks collection on Wikimedia.org.

 

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Meet the candidates: Ron Paul

Rep. Ron Paul (US Congress)

Judging by the number of “Ron Paul for President” signs in the Atlanta area in 2008, Congressman Ron Paul had some of the most loyal and motivated supporters of any candidate in the 2008 presidential primaries.  Sadly for Rep. Paul and his supporters, that devotion did not translate into widespread appeal.  Rep. Paul finished fourth in the Georgia primary with only 2.9 percent of the vote.  It wasn’t much better in other states.  Paul failed to win a single primary, although he did finish second a number of times. 

Now Ron Paul is running for president again.  After four years of Barack Obama’s record-setting spending, Paul’s message of fiscal restraint may be more attractive to recession-weary Americans.  Nevertheless, a RealClearPolitics average of polls from April and May 2011 shows Paul in sixth place with 7.9 percent.  He trails Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, and Newt Gingrich respectively.  He leads Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty, and Mitch Daniels.  Paul might get a slight bump from the recent withdrawals of Huckabee, Trump, and Daniels.

Ronald Ernest Paul was born in Pittsburgh on August 20, 1935.  On Election Day 2012, he will be 77 years old.  He is one year older than John McCain who was 72 when he ran against Barack Obama in 2008. 

Biography.com details Paul’s early life in Pennsylvania as the third among five boys.  He grew up working on the family dairy farm.  He also worked as a paper boy and at a local drugstore.  In high school, he served as president of the student council and was a member of the track and wrestling teams.  He met his future wife, Carol, in high school and married her as a senior. 

Paul attended medical school at Duke University and specialized in obstetrics and gynecology.  He interned at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and then joined the Air Force where he was on active duty from 1963 to 1965 and in the Air National Guard from 1965 to 1968.  He later opened a private practice in Texas where delivered more than 4,000 babies over the course of his career. 

Paul was elected to the House of Representatives from Texas for the first time in 1976 during a special election.  He lost an earlier attempt in 1974.  He served only a few months and lost the general election, but in 1978 was re-elected and served three terms.  He ran unsuccessfully against Phil Gramm for senator in 1984 and passed his house seat to Tom DeLay.

In 1988, Paul once again left private practice to run for president as a Libertarian.  Paul differs from most Libertarians on the issue of abortion.  While most Libertarians are pro-choice, Paul is quoted on RonPaul.com as saying, “As an O.B. doctor of thirty years, and having delivered 4,000 babies, I can assure you life begins at conception…  there’s a legal life there…  if there’s an injury or a killing, there is a legal entity. There is no doubt about it.”

Paul returned to the house as a Republican in 1996 and has served continuously since then.  He currently serves on the House Financial Services Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee.  He is chairman of the Subcommittee on Domestic and Monetary Policy.  During his long career, Paul has also authored a number of books.

Paul has a strong reputation as a critic of government spending and the expansion of government power.  He voted against the PATRIOT Act and the Iraq War, but did vote to authorize the Afghanistan War. He has been very critical of President Obama’s decision to go to war in Libya without congressional authorization.  A deficit hawk, he returns the unused portion of his congressional office funds to be used toward paying down the deficit.  In 2011, he returned $141,580, almost ten percent of his office budget, according to his press release. 

Ron Paul is well known for his criticism of the Federal Reserve. He is the sponsor of H.R. 459, a bill that would require an audit of the Fed.  At his speeches, supporters often interrupt him with chants of “End the Fed!”  He is author of a book by the same name.  Paul supports a return to the gold standard to prevent the Fed’s manipulation of the currency by printing fiat money that can cause inflation.

Paul also has a number of other controversial positions that often put him at odds with the Republican establishment.  He supports an end to the War on Drugs and would legalize some illicit drugs.  On foreign policy, Paul seems to be almost isolationist and favors eliminating foreign aid to almost all countries.  In 2008, Paul endorsed the Constitution Party candidate over the Republican nominee, John McCain, and Libertarian Bob Barr.

A few weeks ago, Paul made headlines when he told Fox News that the SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden was “absolutely not necessary.”  Paul said that he would not have ordered the raid if he had been president.

In spite of Paul’s intensely loyal supporters, many of his positions are too far outside the mainstream to appeal to the moderate and independent voters who decide elections.  Even though Paul has an established base of support on which to draw during the campaign, it will likely be an uphill battle for him to win the Republican nomination.  The odds would be even more against him if he decided to run as a third party candidate.

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