Hey,... this is my first post, and I must say I do not understand what this has to do with poker. Additionally, this is some of the most conspiratorial garbage I've ever read. No offense to the poster, I know Rip is a good contributor to these forums (I have read them for a while), but I feel he has been mislead by this material. I have followed this topic for the last 3 years in depth, and I have read the report of the 911 commission, a non-partisan oversight committee, and I can say without a doubt that the conspiracies cited here are just simply inane. I really don't think this is worth further discussion, but just some quick thoughts about the alleged discrepancies the poster mentions:

1) I suppose that the flight that "supposedly" crashed into the pentagon was blown up in midair or flown to a secret government base and the passengers were executed. So that the government could simply set off a bomb in the pentagon to justice a future war? .. is this really the argument being made here? What possible sense does this make?

2) The cell phones that the passengers called on were not cell phones at all, but rather the air phones, that work at all altitudes, this is clearly disclosed in the 911 committee's research. If your sources weren't so dramatically one-sided this would be obvious.

3) The notion that the government would set up this entire disaster in order for a few people to profit, and to launch a preemptive war would be laughable if it were not so offensive. I am no fan of politicians, and certainly not of big government, but the damage caused to the US as a result of these attacks and the US economy so far outweigh the benefits cited, that it is absolutely ridiculous. Id be more apt to believe that the Bush adm planned on attacking Iraq no matter what.

4) The material on that site is not impressive in the least, wow the pentagon had planned for a potential scenario like 911 in advance?.,. thats really surprising, since they plan for nearly everything.. right now they have continency plans for massive global warming, does this mean that if it happens it will be the result of the US government and their maniacal weather changing machine?

5) People shorting stocks and investing in security and rebuilding stocks means absolutely nothing, it certainly does not prove a conspiracy. Any intelligent observer could see that a pattern emerged in the 90's and that a large scale terrorist attack was likely if not inevitable. Do not forget that Al Quaeda attacked US interests many times prior, was Clinton overseeing these attacks on our embassies and the USS Cole?.. Apparently he must have been since its such a vast conspiracy.

Actually, im just going to stop here, b/c just about everything on these sites is garbage. I would expect an intelligent person to approach this material with some skepticism. Rip, didn't you notice that the site you were "researching" on is obviously leftist propaganda.. or do you believe all the other anti-bush, anti-US theories on there as well. "the Bush crime family", "the anthrax scam", "CIA Nazis".. I mean maybe it is just hard for me to take this site seriously, while you bash the "mainstream" media like CNN which you somehow envision as in the pocket of the government.

I am telling you, sites like that are going to rot your brain and make you paranoid, there is so much oversight this day in age, that nothing they are describing is likely, maybe 1 out of 25 theories.