And who at The Free Press thought TODAY was the right time for this article? Since we’re already living in a Theater-of-the-Absurd world, perhaps the 911 memorial is a fitting place to display the art of terrorists who were responsible for it.
Shame on the free press for running this on 9/11. Some of us remember people jumping off the towers -- how about an article about how their relatives are doing.
As a US citizen, I have very few regrets about the people my government has killed in the name of protecting both our country and that of countries allied with us going all the way back to 1776. Viet Nam might be one - those killed or imprisoned after 9/11, I have no regrets. Even if going into Iraq was pretty stupid - it at least got rid of one of the worlds biggest despots.
Democracy doesn't mean that nobody ever will be killed. People died in the American Revolution, the French Revolution, WW I and WW II to name some obvious examples. It wasn't for nothing.
Sometimes democracy comes with death. Only the lives of the defenders are worth celebrating and only their deaths are worth mourning or eulogizing.
OK. What about them? We make a lot of mistakes. But this was deliberate, an act of war, unprovoked, and a lot of innocent people just going to work on a Tuesday morning were killed, right on our own soil. Maybe you should listen to the names of the victims when they are enunciated next 9/11 to gain a little perspective.
Yes! So many stories from our NYC office ... like an 18-month old girl whose mother went into the office a bit early that Tuesday morning to send data to our London office...thank goodness her father decided to go to the gym instead, or she’d have grown up entirely without parents. Don’t get me started.
Exactly., I ran across 60 minutes last night doing a 9 11 story interviewing the firefighters and showing footage of the towers being run into and then collapsing and the people jumping from the top floors and the sound of the bodies hitting. It is still raw.
And the FPruns this bullshit art story about the poor artists. Give us a break. If this isn’t completely fucking (sorry) tone deaf I don’t know what is.
" I ran across 60 minutes last night doing a 9 11 story interviewing the firefighters and showing footage of the towers being run into and then collapsing and the people jumping from the top floors and the sound of the bodies hitting. It is still raw."
I think that’s the point of running it today. Not all of them were “terrorists”. Many weren’t even charged. So does our society believe in innocent until proven guilty, or don’t we?
So do we do carve outs for permanent residents? Visitors? It’s due process for me, but not for some of those people who aren’t “citizens”?
There’s “not treated the same”, and there’s detained for up to 20 years or more, with a side of torture thrown in. That’s not a moral position I’m comfortable with. Ymmv.
And unless you are suggesting we have simply released “enemy combatants”, it would seem that our initial determination about some/many of those people was simply wrong.
I think we have released enemy combatants. Just ones that were not deemed dangerous enough or important enough to keep holding.
We traded a big-name arms dealer to Russia in exchange for a women's basketball player who had legitimately broke Russian law. Don't think for a moment that we don't release enemy combatants when those in power choose to do so.
But if you know that, why didn’t the CIA or whoever is charge know that, and use that info to charge and convict and properly sentence those people, rather than detain for a bunch of years then release them. If some were “traded”….fine. But is that all or even most of them? And what is your evidence for suggesting that, if that’s what you’re suggesting?
I don't "know" that. I can only draw reasonable inferences based on what U.S. officials have done in the past.
The fact that someone is not arrested and charged does not necessarily mean they are not a criminal. It just means that the authorities have not been able to collect the proper kind of evidence that those authorities believe would actually result in their conviction.
Consider the case of Josh Powell. In 2009, his wife, Susan Powell, disappeared. The West Valley, Utah police actually collected a LOT of evidence that suggested very strongly that he had murdered her. In fact, after he murdered his sons and committed suicide in 2012 in Graham, Washington, the Washington Prosecutor's Office opined that THEY would have charged him with Susan's murder based on the evidence West Valley had. But without her body (which, to this day, has not been found), they were hesitant to bring those charges. That is certainly a case where the authorities "knew" he was a murderer, despite fearing they did not have the evidence to prove it.
Or here's something a little closer to home for me. A decade ago, I worked for four months as a teacher/tutor at one of the WWASP schools, which are basically reform schools for the kids of rich parents. I could sense that there were serious problems. The school was not the professional institution that it was touted to parents to be. The principal did not have an education degree; in fact, she was formerly the receptionist. The people "counseling" the students did not have the necessary degrees or certifications to do so. And the facility was largely in horrible shape, with parent visits confined to "nice" areas.
The only way a person stayed employed there was either to join in the bullying culture or to keep their head down and their mouth very firmly shut. I was not willing to do either of those things, so that was the only job I was ever fired from.
But even though I was disturbed by what I saw there, I never saw anything that could have led to a conviction. It wasn't until about 3 years later that a student confided to a teacher that the guy who ran the school was sexually abusing her. This teacher went (as I would have done) to the authorities, doing her duty as a mandatory reporter. For that, the school fired her. (She did win a wrongful termination suit.)
Finally the school was investigated by serious levels of law enforcement. And one of the things that came out during that process was that all of the local authorities *knew* there were issues at the school. One of the biggest reasons they didn't shut it down was because whichever agency did so would become financially responsible for the kids until their parents came to get them.
The head of the school was tried and found guilty of abuse. I was not surprised, due to the things I "knew" about him. But those things had all been on the level of impressions and suspicions based on his words and behavior, not the kind of hard evidence required to convict someone in court.
Glad to see there's true free thinkers and not just rabid authoritarians in this comment section. Yes, innocent until proven guilty is how it works. That's one of the civilizing ideas of the Enlightenment, and something we should NEVER forget or throw away.
I'm really disappointed in TFP. I wouldn't have minded this story the day after. Today, I would have liked any sort of reminder about the bravery and sacrifice of people like, say, the NYC firefighters or the ordinary citizens of Flight 93.
Instead, we have to hear about this (potentially innocent) guy's stupid artwork.
That's totally valid. The timing is a bit about pulling attention by being different, maybe? I don't know since I'm not the one who published it.
I'm just on an internal journey trying to figure out why the response to 9/11 never sat well with me and why it feels SO MUCH like the discomfort I have with the response to covid.
The themes I can see with both are a) fear/hysteria from overblowing how much of a threat something is and b) dehumanizing a group as a response.
The response to 9/11 extremely questionable and not well handled (and I'm not even talking about the invasion of Iraq). But, again, I think it's just very poor taste to run this article on 9/11.
As to dehumanizing a group as a response: perhaps we may have done some of that, but let's not forget that it was mainly Saudi Arabian nationals who believed they were doing God's will by killing infidel Americans who started this whole thing. Who's dehumanizing who?
Obviously those deaths were tragic and unjustified. They were obviously innocent people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
***Revenge will never bring those people back though***
NOTHING that was done as a result can ever bring them back, and none of it made life better for the people still here, *including the families of the victims.* Not the Patriot Act, not the stupid shit we still do in airports now, not bombing countries that most Americans weren't even aware of before then. Certainly making people more afraid didn't help, and normalizing "enhanced interrogation" certainly did nothing to bring back the victims of 9/11 OR the world we knew before that day.
Same way lockdowns and mandates didn't save people from covid, they just made life shittier and the country less free while they died anyways.
I always got the sense that the response was a about revenge and there was an element of dehumanization towards Middle Easterners.
The good news is that Americans are discovering that Middle Easterners tend to be very anti-gay and especially anti-trans so alliances are starting to form now that there's a new unpopular group to focus on. That's sarcasm btw.
Yeah, I get it, but running a story about artwork from a guy who was in Gitmo on 9/11 of any other possible day out of the other 364 days of the year feels like a slap in the face.
Let me hear about this guy's stupid art another day. Today I want to remember the firefighters, policemen, and all the ordinary Americans who acted with bravery to save their fellow citizens lives.
Bari had a post recently about precisely not doing things that stick to a prevailing narrative. It’s easy to support a “counter” narrative when it’s actually your narrative. But the test is whether you support a counter narrative when it actually counters your own. If not, then I submit what you want isn’t a counter narrative, but simply your preferred narrative.
I think you're missing the point I'm trying to make.
I get that this guy may have a story to tell. I get that this story may actually have some sort of value to it.
But give me a freaking break posting this on 9/11. Obviously, these guys at TFP don't give a shit about the firefighters, cops, and ordinary Americans who died that day.
I didn't expect them to wave the flag and beat the drum, but this is just insulting, man.
I remember the story they posted on the anniversary of the Iraq invasion. I thought that was great. Very insightful.
This? It's hard to swallow, man. In fact I'm cancelling my sub. Bari can take her narrative of looking at 9/11 from a different perspective and sell it to any lefty elitist willing to buy it. This poor boy from Alabama ain't.
I have no idea what Bari does or does not GAF about. But considering she’s a New Yorker (at least at 1 time), my default prior would NOT be that she doesn’t care about 9/11 first responders etc.
For me, I come here for a diverse POV. But to each their own.
I get it, but there's a difference between having a diverse POV and just showing how detached you are from your reader base. This, IMO, did very much so the latter.
That isn't obvious at all... I'm sure they do care about cops and firefighters. What you don't seem to care about, at all, is actually reading the article.
1/6 anger is getting people thrown in prison for 22 years without having been present.
9/11 anger saw this man tortured and held for 18 years on suspicion, without definitive proof, that he was...at most....a hired bodyguard who may or may not have had any idea what his boss was up to.
See Ben, if you read the article, you'll find that they have no evidence this guy was involved in 9/11 at all. Supposedly he was, at some point, Bin Laden's bodyguard. They never proved that either. So... If 9/11 is the reason we held and tortured this man without evidence, today is the perfect day to be reminded that we need to control out tempers if we really want to be the city on the hill.
How is that morally fluid? They are not accused of crimes that would require prosecution in American courts. They are not members of a standing army so do not meet the requirement for coverage/protections under the Geneva Convention. ICBW but I think American military tribunals have jurisdiction over American military members, not foreign combatants. Lastly, if Gitmo is so outrageous where is the UN et al outrage? These guys seem to have pretty competent representation and their lawyers can't come up with a basis to free them or, more importantly for the purposes of this discussion, a way to invoke the jurisdiction of an American court to review their plight. Lastly, this situation does serve a deterrent effect.
It’s morally fluid because your justification boils down to jurisdiction. So anything goes as long as it’s outside of jurisdiction. It’s not “right” but rules of right and wrong don’t apply outside of jurisdiction so fly at’er. That counts as fluid to me. Ymmv.
It is what gives a court authority to act. It has Bern a long time but I am pretty sure that is what American courts said on the matter when actions were brought years ago - this court has no authority to act. And I actually acknowledged that Gitmo it is an imperfect solution. I just said I am okay with it. Gizmo, not the torture prior thereto. That is because I do not have a "right" solution. Nor do you.
Edited to add you changed your position. You said my position was morally fluid before I said the word jurisdiction.
You're right about that they're not American courts of law by design. If they were so trials would have been mandated regardless if there was enough evidence or not, or the inmates would have had to be released. They're not POW's. They're not enemy combatants since there is no military affiliation. They're suspected terrorists. Convenient that it's on another country's territory, American jurisprudence and due process need not be followed.
But if my memory serves, and please help me out here, I think this move offshore to house these men was aided by every state in the Union showing extreme reluctance to have them in prisons in their jurisdictions, thus allowing the US military to find other means.
I think you are right. My only quibble is that I don't think this was a military decision but rather a political one. And my regard for those is certainly down the tubes. As I recall though there was much discussion at the time and they are considered "enemy combatants" or some such term. This, as I recall, was because they were not considered criminal defendants (which would mean trials in American courts in the States) or POWs (which would require treatment pursuant to the Geneva Convention). Rather they were/are viewed as combatants. I am actually okay with this in a way - if they are actual terrorists they elected to wage irregular war so irregular consequences are justified IMO. But there is no doubt there is room for mistakes. There are mistakes made in American courts of law. OTOH there have been released Gitmo detainees that returned to terrorism. You know these guys have been represented by some very skilled lawyers. There were efforts to get them recourse in American courts but the courts refused ostensibly for lack of jurisdiction. Which is valid, a court has to have power to act or it is a futile effort. But as I recall there was also discussion about an inability to have trials in courts of record because much of the evidence would involve classified information. And that torture would have been raised and that was denied for ages.
Good comment. Re Congress - they don't address much these days, for all the reasons we agree on. Guantanamo? Torture in CIA black holes? Classified info? They wouldn't touch that with a ten foot Pole (Ukrainian?).
Ha ha ha. But you know a lot of the nation's ills trace back to Congress and its failures to act on matters of great importance. I was licensed shortly after the Reagan amnesty when the pro.ise was made for immigration reform. I was interested because I thought it would be a good field of practice. I have spent my adult life waiting for the promised reform. They stood by as bystanders to a 20 year "war" in Afghanistan. And I don't get it. They are all power mad, so use some.
It's fair to say that there are certain situations where a reasonable person would conclude that a person is guilty, and yet where the way in which evidence was obtained would cause it to be thrown out, or where some of it is circumstantial.
It's also fair to ask: should there be different rules for some categories of suspects or for some categories of crimes...or whatever context applies?
It is also fair to say: with no other option, the only choice was to keep such categories of people in a Gitmo, and to allow any arbitrary rules the administration of the time decides to impose.
But, are you also advocating that future American governments should have arbitrary power to take any actions they like? Are you throwing up your hands and saying: we cannot take the experience of Gitmo and come up with objective rules that we can use in the future? That we can't come up with laws that will apply to special circumstances? That we throw up our hands and say: no rules of law are possible, we'll just give the president free reign?
I am trying to get people to understand that the Gitmo detainees are not an American criminal justice matter. Period. People, lots of people are conflating "crime" with "terrorism" and what the US government did to those accused of terrorism with criminal prosecution. They are apples and oranges. The US government opted to fight terrorism by going after it abroad. You can debate whether or not that was justified but that is not what I am doing. I am saying, as clearly as I can, whatever the Gitmo detainees are, they are not accused in American courts of law. Because they are not accused in American courts of law that myriad of rights, privileges, immunities, and defenses that accrue to the accused in an American court of law do not apply to them. Nor as that system is designed could they ever.
Because prosecution of crime starts with a crime in a given locale (or locales) which establishes venue and gives a court in that geographic location the authority (jurisdiction) to act. We have contorted that somewhat with mail and wire fraud statutes but every crime prosecuted in the US has either an accused or a victim in the court's venue and jurisdiction. Some terrorists acts can be, and have been, prosecuted in American courts. But the Gitmo detainees committed their acts overseas. Their acts were considered terrorism or terrorism related. Terrorism does not target a specific victim. Rather any casualty of terrorism is good for the terrorist; by definition the goal of terrorism is to shock and instill fear in the the terrorized. Thus there could never by a witness to testify in a terrorist plot that was thwarted. No complaining witness, no ability to charge a crime.
As for your first paragraph, in an American prosecution what a reasonable person would say is merely their opinion and irrelevant. Unless they are a seated juror in the subject prosecution in which case, as long as arrived at in accordance with the law pertaining to juror conduct, their opinion, along with that of their fellow jurors, is determinative. Guilty or not guilty. And admissable circumstantial evidence is evidence. Guilty convictions are obtained multiple times every day based on circumstantial evidence. Other evidence is indeed suppressed, for a variety of reasons, including unlawful search and seizure.
As for your last paragraph and it's queries I have not opined at all about future events. But to answer your questions, I am by nature and training not a fan of arbitrariness. It undermines the rule of law. I am also not a fan of unrestrained governmental power and the folly thereof has been brought home to me in a big way in the last decade. (And I think it should have been to my fellow Americans too FWIW.) The idea of giving the "president free reign" is at this point misleading because the president is not calling the shots, rather it is the unelected, unaccountable career bureaucrats in the executive branch alphabet agencies who pick the weakest candidate for president and throw their considerable power into seeing him or her elected. BTW some of those career bureaucrats are the ones who designed the Gitmo solution. So draw your own conclusions about that. I would hope that we always analyze and grow from experience. I think that is a human condition. Whether or not the American government is still capable of that is anybody's guess.
Lastly, I assume my lack of regard for Gitmo detainees is apparent and what draws this continued response. FWIW I think when you, either as an individual or an informal, loosely aligned group undertake to harm people merely because they are Americans you should be stopped. If that means hunting them like predatory animals and locking them away forever I am okay with that. It is their choice and I think choices have and should have consequences. That being said I have the same sympathy for those falsely accused of terrorism as I do for those falsely accused of crimes prosecuted in American courts. And it is considerable.
I suggest you volunteer to go to Afghanistan or Iran and try to collect evidence against Islamic terrorists. Don't forget to get a warrant for everything you want to get and be sure to observe strict chain of custody for it. And don't bring in anything that might be "fruit of the poisioned tree" based on information from questionable sources.
Prisoners of war are not given trials. They are confined in POW camps until the war is over.
POWs are specifically protected by Geneva conventions. The issue with gitmo is precisely because they are not labelled POWs, so no one seems to have legal jurisdiction. So yeah, both “fruit” but you’re mixing apples with oranges bud.
Steve, SAME applies for some of the J6 rioters, uh excuse me “Insurrectionist” Where is the “innocent till proven guilty” in their cases? Many are still waiting for their “speedy trials”
The point is, TODAY of ALL days should be devoted to the innocent 3,000 + survivors. Or, at the very least, TFP might have included an article honoring & remembering them, too!
What is it about the WOKE Left always wanting to play the gotch game of, “Well, just because all THOSE innocent people were targeted & killed on 9/11 shouldn’t override the horrors of what has happened to some innocent detainees. USA bad”
Take a page from the Jews.......hunt them down and shoot them. All this based on "war justice". These are not normal crimes....they do not deserve a day in our courts.
They don't even know for sure if the main guy written about in the article did anything... He was accused, without evidence, of having been Bin Laden's bodyguard at some point. They tortured and held the man for 18 years because of that, because we were all angry about 9/11.
Some people are very angry about 1/6, and now Taario is in prison for 22 years without even having been present at the capitol.
If you don't see the problem here, then maybe you aren't one of the good guys.
Why not? 9/11 is what caused us to imprison and torture the man for 18 years, with only hearsay evidence that he MIGHT have been Bin Laden's bodyguard. We got nothing out of it, except for a few marines and cia agents getting their sick rocks off. Today is THEE day to run this article.
Thank you for writing what many of us were thinking as we read this article. It was bad timing and insensitive to the families that lost loved ones on this day.
Well you know, for Bari Weiss and Co. the real victims of 9/11 are the Islamofascists who killed thousands of people and tried to murder the president. Won't someone think of how they feel!
Rabbani, the artist in question, was held for eighteen years and was never convicted of a crime. He never had his day in court. Not enough prosecutorial evidence, apparently. But because he was ensnared in the bureaucratic nightmare of being swept up in the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack on American soil, he languished. And now suddenly he's released, after being held all this time with no due process. I understand your anger, Lady in the Lake, but how do you know this guy is responsible for anything that happened that day?
The people held at Guantanamo weren’t just random Arabic men plucked off the streets. Each had some connection to terrorist organizations. I’m not a lawyer and don’t even play one on TV, but I understand that the term “enemy combatant” does not confer the same rights as our judicial system otherwise confers on the accused.
The inclusion of an article about a Guantanamo prisoner on 9/11, instead of one about the lives lost, and more changed that day, seems particularly tone-deaf and insensitive to the colossal losses suffered that day.
And yet they were never able to prove that many of these detainees were involved in 9/11, as was pointed out in the article. They were swept up by accusations and tortured in the wake of 9/11. Have you seen the government's evidence that the men written about in this article did anything to us? I haven't.
I'm surprised I made it through as much of this apologist rag-column as I did. I suppose this is what a Free Press means, even if it is misinformation (what we used to call enemy propaganda).
Keeping men in prison without proving their guilt was wrong and they should have been released if there was no evidence to convict them. "Enhanced interrogation" was nothing but torture and should never have happened. The late Senator McCain said a man will confess to anything under torture to get it to stop. There are maximum security prisons in the US for the ones convicted of terrorism and Gitmo should have been closed long ago.
If we were just randomly rounding up innocent Arab guys we would have needed to use Hawaii, not Gitmo.
All of these guys were scumbags; it’s just a little hard to have a regular proving of guilt when all of the evidence is in a country that beheads people and doesn’t have electricity.
You are displaying exactly the same kind of cynicism as those who called the concentration camp Theresienstadt "that beautiful city the Fuehrer gave to the jews".
I agree that keeping men in prison indefinitely without a trial is wrong. A program should be fashioned to try or release the remaining prisoners within a time certain. I don't agree that enhanced interrogation is necessarily torture. Celebrating the art of Gitmo detainees doesn't seem like the best way to commorate 9/11. As for McCain, I blame him and his poor campaign for eight years of Obama and, indirectly, for the travesty of the Biden regime.
" I don't agree that enhanced interrogation is necessarily torture."
Anyone who thinks that waterboarding and all the other "enhanced interrogation" we did isn't torture is hereby invited to a session of six of it streamed live on YouTube. I suspect you will change your mind rather quickly when the first gallon of water goes into your lungs.
The way the term enhanced interrogation was used was to cover up the reality this was torture and not simply aggressive questioning. The point I was making about John McCain was he had been a prisoner of war, been tortured himself and knew it didn’t really work to obtain information. Even people who knew absolutely nothing would babble out a story to please the interrogators.
I’m shocked and horrified by the number of commenters here do not even seem aware of the US role in promoting and perpetrating torture, terrorism and death squads in other countries, or the Blowback that it engenders.
You still don’t. She’s passing on an unsubstantiated rumor from Rolling Stone and other far left media that was started by a former Gitmo prisoner recently. Military personnel and others stationed with DeSantis say he did nothing of the sort.
I’m not a DeSantis supporter, but I have no respect for smear campaigns.
You are showing exactly the same kind of cynicism as those who used to call the concentration camp Theresienstadt "that beautiful city the Fuehrer gave to the jews".
Jan 6 is not a direct comparison, regardless of where you stand on Jan 6. The detainees have all been charged, alto several hundred are still awaiting trial. That is definitely not swift justice more than 2.5 years later.
But some at Gitmo were never even charged. For over 20 years. Plus the torture.
So maybe you could argue that they are on the same spectrum of lack/failure of due process. But they are pretty widely separated on that spectrum.
Why was the concentration camp in Guantanamo opened in the first place?
To deprive the inmates there of all those rights the Jan 6 felons still enjoy. To be represented by a lawyer of their choice, not to be tortured, to have a speedy trial......
Guantanamo was the US "going Nazi", "going Gestapo". Bypassing the legal system to be able to hold, torture and kill people as You please without having to answer to anyone. Exercising "thug justice".
I think there is a legal distinction between the rights of a US citizen and the rights of someone "visiting" this country. Are any of the "Gitmo guys" citizens of the United States?
I forgot. "Visitors" traditionally don't enjoy any rights in Your country. In the old days "visitors" even used to be put to work as slaves in the cotton fields.
Sorry bud, I’m not prepared to venture into an alternate reality where nothing is torture. I’ll just borrow the SCOTUS litmus for pornography: you know it when you see it. Again, ymmv.
Maybe you can tell us what torture is in your book. You’re the first I’ve come across who suggests their treatment didn’t amount to torture. Most people I’ve come across have shared the same “you know of when you see it” threshold I have.
Torture is the deliberate infliction of Severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties.
Severe being the Operative word.
IF you are going to Torture someone you don't have Doctors Psychologists standing by to insure the person is not physically harmed. You Don't have written regulations stating Exactly what is allowed and what isn't. As I stated above KSM knew this and would countdown the time remaining.
I would hope so. It had a calming effect on the prisoners. If it's about rehabilitation rather than punishment, that's exactly the kind of thing that should be going on.
I supported the whole GWOT wholeheartedly for many years, and believed everything I was told. I knew one guy killed in Fallujah, and corresponded with a number of people both while they were deployed and after, including an Army Medic working in the Triangle of Death at the height of those horrors.
Having said that, I will say I have come to largely share the perspective of much of the anti-war Left, which seems in some ways to have been accidentally right.
The CIA in my view was ABSOLUTELY involved in planning and perpetrating 9/11, which to my mind means at least some of these people may actually be, and have been, innocent. If so, the analogy with the J6 political prisoners is absolutely apt.
Delta had Bin Laden trapped at Tora Bora early on, as former CAG officer “Dalton Fury” wrote in his memoir. His superiors stalled and drlayed until Bin Laden escaped.
I was also told in a bar in San Diego around 2005 by a guy who claimed to have worked for Blackwater that we had exact lications in Pakistan for Bin Laden, Al Zawahiri and in his words “all of them.”
Its not unreasonable to suppose this whole thing was created by a faction in our governmemt, then artificially extended by the same faction.
I am very patriotic, but it is very clear to me there are rotten elements on the public payroll.
It is ironically appropriate that we learned today from one of JFK’s Secret Service agents that there had to have been a second shooter.
Truth is always will be what it is. It has no mandate to be pleasant, congenial, or easily acceptable.
The notion that the US government participated in the planning and perpetrating of 9/11 is a bridge too far for me. That being said it certainly changed the world we lived in and creation of Homeland Security, which I thought reasonable at the time, has been a devastating blow to civil rights, perhaps a death knell.
If you think the CIA is actually that competent I have a bridge to sell you. I don't think most people understand the caliber of the average intelligence agency employee.
That too but most insane conspiracy theorists need to be reminded in a more succinct manner that they're letting murderous terrorists off the hook because of their stupidity
I’ve watched the original presentation. Their claim is that the “combustion of office furnishings caused a symmetrical collapse at near freefall velocity of a 47 story office building. That is ludicrous.
And their computer model does not simulate the full collapse.
Professor of Forensic Structural Engineering Leroy Hulsey spent two years creating a detailed model and concluded that only the near simultaneous failure of all supports could explain what was seen. That means explosives and cutting charges.
Dan Rather said as he watched it that it looked like a controlled demolition. Its obvious. You have to work not to see it.
Next time you go in an office building imagine spending as much time as you like dowsing everything with a flamethrower filled with jet fuel. You would NEVER be able to collapse a building. Ever. Even if you spent weeks at it.
I have (as I have stated all things 9-11/GWOT was an obsession of mine for 10 years read darn near Everything I could on this) I've read about building 7, And You are wrong.
"an honest investigation would have proven that"
Translation: I'm right and they are wrong and all part of THE PLOT.
BTW I didn't see any Facts in your rely, just opinions. As a buddy of mine once said "Opinions are like assholes, everyone has got one."
Watch any of the videos of the collapse. If you think the “combustion of office furnishings”—which is a direct quote from the final NIST report—could cause a modern skyscraper to collapse like that, then you have manifestly rendered yourself immune to reason.
On this issue I AM right. Period. You can agree with me or be wrong. I never use language like that, but it is well warranted here.
If you want facts, read Leroy Hulseys final report at ae911truth.org.
Will be interesting to see if Donald Trump is able to create any piece of art once he will do his time. Yes he shall also have that opportunity. I'm all for it.
Another deranged idiot heard from. Could there be anything less satisfying than seeing a President of the United States locked up? You must be ill to think this would help our country in any way. Whether you support him or not, denigrating our country to serve a political objective is absurd. No wonder we're in trouble.
Of course there is something "less satisfying than seeing a President of the United States locked up", it's seeing a common thieve and thug residing in the White House and now You even see the next one of this kind residing there. If You Americans do not smarten up soon and start to make better choices at the polls You might as well add a "president wing" to one of Your prisons.
The "deranged idiots" are in fact those who vote for "deranged idiots" at presidential elections and those who believe that former presidents should be above the law.
I writer this with a heavy heart, but Ms. Weiss, if you're reading this, what the hell are you doing?
Maybe I'm just tired and empathy-fatigued today after working a hellish weekend in emergency medicine, but you pick TODAY to run a story about GITMO detainees? REALLY??
I respect the hell out of what you did. Leaving one of the top posts in your field to start something on your own. That takes some serious brass ones.
But, I have to say, more and more I am seeing the lefty-sensibilities creep out of the editorial decisions of this paper. I get that you covered stuff that the MSM doesn't touch. Good stuff, I applaud that.
But THIS? For those of us that LIVE here in the NYC area, 9-11 is no abstraction, it's a REAL thing. I thought you knew that, or at least empathized with it. You're exhibiting the same sort of tone-deafness that you accuse the NYT et al. of doing. Come ON Bari... I mean REALLY?
For as much as I respect your courage - and I do - I fear that you are building a new NYT/WP. I want news coverage that is DOWN THE MIDDLE and exhibits RESPECT for it's subject. For the REAL America that doesn't live on the UWS or LA. For the truck drivers, the nurses, the convenience store workers, the everyday people that make our world run. EVERY DAY.
I get that as an gutsy entrepreneur you are supposed to lead/create the market. But man this one stung. GOD BLESS those who died on 9-11 and their families. And GOD BLESS America.
Sgd427, thanks for writing that. I agree with all of it. What a sad presentation on this 911 Memorial Day. It seems like such an insult to the families of that awful day.
An interesting story - thanks for telling it. It led me to wonder, how many captives from prisons run by Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other radical Islamist extremist groups were similarly cared for and allowed to develop their artistic skills, then ultimately set free. Let me know if you need a calculator for this one.
The timing of this article is in extremely poor taste. This is the first time I’ve been disappointed by the free press but man is it a doozy.
Freedom of speech is one thing. Releasing an article about prisoners who orchestrated and carried out the most horrific terrorist attack to try and make us feel sorry for them on the anniversary of the attack is a whole other level.
I mean it’s pretty disrespectful but we live in a world where Joe Biden wanted the anniversary of 9/11 to be about him, a lifelong parasite with zero skills, which resulted in 13 kids getting blown up. So in context it’s really not that bad.
Your comments are in extremely poor taste. Yes, we got attacked and many innocent people died. You seem to think that we deserved it. Take a look in the mirror before you post such hate-filled comments.
Wow Bari. Could you imagine a story about how Nazi guards created artwork at Auschwitz?
This story is totally inappropriate as people who’ve lost loved ones are still suffering.
Gitmo is the Ritz compared to those who burned to death or jumped to their death to avoid fire or were on those planes knowing they were going to crash and never see loved ones again or Firefighters who gave their lives.
For all the great stories you’ve had, you just lost me as a subscriber.
Some things are just beyond the pale and this is one of them. So long.
In some respects the whole reason I am a Christian is because I think there IS a struggle between good and evil. And my version of good is Christ. But we as a people are so reluctant to identify anything or anyone as evil or an enemy. I believe in love your neighbor, I really do. I believe in turning the other cheek, but is that wise when you have an enemy that openly expresses the desire to annihilate you?
Next September 11th you should do a puff piece about Hunter Biden’s paintings that depict his father’s successful withdrawal from Afghanistan and Hunter’s unsuccessful withdrawal from that one stripper from Arkansas.
The subtitle of this piece is, "A story about the prison that will never close. The men who became artists inside it. And some uncomfortable truths about America."
Here is an uncomfortable truth. These thugs get three hots and a cot in clean cells with good food.
The left always likes to portray the US a brutal shit hole police state. Go visit a Middle Eastern prison and see what the living conditions are like, Turkey for example.
You want brutality. If you step out of line in a Muslim prison, you get the crap beaten out of you and the food isn't so great either.
far left people do not travel. It's the only conclusion i can draw from their incessant complaining about the US. They need to go live abroad for a few years. Even European countries are not like the United States of America. Everyone complaining needs to travel.
Yup. My family is from India. Not so comfy there is it? When all you can do is complain and self-hate for money/clout/clicks as much of the American left seems to do, it is in indicator that life has become too easy. To the snotty, incessantly self regarding left, I say get a job.
People just do not get this; i have to live abroad. It's the thinking that one misses the most. the American 'can do and will do' thinking. Also, the American identity. It's being handed away by people who are not smart enough to understand the value of this extraordinary identity. It is a civil war fought in the minds. The battle ground is the American mind and people overseas know this to be true.
Untrue. I am a socialist and lived in 4 different country's for many years even the US when Sept 11th happened. I was shocked at the patriotism and disgusting display of 'oh poor us!' What the US has perperated on the world in the name of Democracy is the EVIL.
Wait a few years before you find out what really happened.
I see you're one of the people who was saying "We deserved it" on 9/12. I was surrounded by them at the time.
While I agree that our government did outrageous things we should not have done during the Cold War, I don't think it would have been any better of an idea to simply sit back and allow Soviet-inspired authoritarians to do outrageous things all over the world instead. I'm sure you disagree, since those people are undoubtedly your heroes.
But you don't seem to realize that cheering on the deaths of thousands and thousands of innocent American civilians on a single day, as if it were a just recompense for the wrongs done by the CIA, really isn't a good look for you people. It's similar to what you probably did during Covid--wishing death on people who didn't want to take an experimental vaccine, wanting to lock them up for their refusal.
And I'm sure you're screaming, "But that's different!"
I wasn't trying to persuade this fanatic of anything--as you say, that's impossible. Indeed, I was merely describing the particular type of evil she revels in, as clearly and succinctly as possible. I didn't realize until 9/12 that there were so many people so openly enamored of it.
And another thing. Please be specific and point out examples of the US being evil.
"What the US has perperated sic on the world in the name of Democracy is the EVIL."
What is evil is your political philosophy which is responsible for the deaths of tens on millions of innocent people and these evil socialist dictators are still around, think China, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela.
When it comes to murdering people, Lenin, Stalin and Mao make all other brutal dictators look like armatures and Hitler look like a girl scout selling cookies.
Hitler was a monster but these guys put him in the shade.
And this is the ideology you support? What does this make you?
Can you point out just one socialist country that is not run by a brutal dictator. Historians call Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao socialists. Lenin, Stalin and Mao murdered tens of millions of people.
France is not a socialist country. It is a capitalistic country that has large social programs. The same goes for the Scandinavian countries. They are all capitalist countries with large social programs and tax the living daylights out of their citizens to sustain these programs.
It doesn't surprise me that a person who claims to be a socialist doesn't know squat about socialism or know what it is.
This seems like a good time to share the joke from when my brother was in flight school and one of the female pilots destroyed one of the planes and we called it “Vaginaleven”.
Wow. I know you guys are young. And I know you're kinda in that Ivy League bubble with its warped lens of what is "insightful" or "profound", but really? Publishing this shallow, vacuous, pompous piece on 9-11? Do you somehow think this is "brave"?? There's no bravery here. It's way beyond tone deaf. I can't find the word for it.
I was at my trading desk in Chicago early that morning. I'll always remember the horror of that day. At first everyone thought a small plane had hit the first tower and we were comparing it to similar incident in Chicago years ago. Then......the second plane hit, and you knew what this was. The choking smoke; the flames; the people sticking their heads out broken windows gasping for air. Some deciding they'd had enough and jumping to deaths marked by pink spray as they hit the ground. They never found any bodies because as the towers fell, the people inside were in a meat grinder, being ground to bits too small to be found.
I'd used the term "mind-boggling" my entire life; but I told people I never knew what it truly meant until I saw the first tower fall. It was surreal. I was 1500 miles away and I wanted to get up and run somewhere.
I knew people in those towers. I'd been in one of the towers for conferences. And you guys somehow think it is cute to publish this insipid puerile piece today??? It almost seems cavalier. Classist, as in "the people who died there were less important than we who have these wonderful credentials.
Go talk to the survivors of the first responders of that day. The secretaries who died because they went to work that day. Tell them why you are so clever in choosing today to publish this sophomoric piece.
Shame on you. You're the same age as my daughters, so I get the immaturity. But, still, shame on you.
I knew a person who was there on that day and shared with me 3 things that people could not see or experience from watching the horrifying event on TV. These things were 1) the smell and odor in the air 2) screams of people as they jumped out the windows and 3) the feel of the soot on your skin.
Thank you for your account of your experience on that day, Tom Sparks; and to all who are taking the time to share comments in support of the heroes and victims that day. This is truly inspiring to know so many WILL remember with compassion and with a correct accounting of what’s really important about this history.
Yeah. One thing I (tried) to take to heart decades ago was the old saying "Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to something else.". I'm a quasi-Ivy Leaguer myself (MIT, 1980) so I know these schools can pump you up on your own self-importance and intelligence. I was just lucky enough to go to the Chicago Board of Trade and have this arrogance beaten out of me by guys who'd barely graduated HS. Academic intelligence is an important part of the world. There are many other forms of intelligence too though, and they are just as important. Critical, actually. But, the insular view of academic credentialism has taken over.
Remember how Obama fought to get those terrorists tried in NY to get them easier sentences and then closed the National Mall on Veterans Day and made a special exception to reopen it for an illegal immigrant parade?
Obama does not get enough credit for being a sack of shit who hates America.
I was a guard at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in 2007-2008. It was my first duty assignment after enlisting in the US Navy. I was trained to be an avionics technician, but they were desperate for anyone and promised lots of bonus pay and early promotions for volunteers to go to Gitmo.
I do not associate names with any prisoners because that information wasn’t really available to us, but Rabbani’s face looks familiar to me. He and the majority of the inmates (“detainees” as we were supposed to call them, which was reduced to “tainers” in camp slang) were quiet and compliant. A handful were actively belligerent toward the guards, including one elderly man who punched me in the face as I was releasing him from a chair used for intubated feeding. He was on hunger strike, so it was actually more of a love tap than a punch.
My year in Guantanamo was probably the hardest year of my life, and that was as a guard. I don’t know if anyone deserves to be there, even the hardened Jihadists. As an American I believe that all humans have a right to due process. But having seen the people there with my own eyes, and read some of the intelligence reports available on the camp network, I am fairly certain that many were wrongly imprisoned and that weighs heavily on me.
You’re right, and I hope that justice is served. But a large body of publicly available information has confirmed that many prisoners kept in Guantanamo for years were not guilty of any crime, and that’s a tragedy. Of course any system of justice is going to get it wrong sometimes, and the question we should ask is whether the error rate at Gitmo was worth it.
Why are we romanticizing about Guantanamo and on 9/11 no less? These guys should have been tried already in a military court. Sentence them to life in prison or hung. They are all guilty by association. We are probably treating them better than they would be if they went back to their home country. The fact that their home country doesn't even want them should be evidence enough that they are dangerous men. I am insulted by this article on 9/11. Is nothing sacred, Bari?
Be careful what you wish for. By your definition, every MAGA who applauded January 6 could be thrown into Gitmo and tortured because they are "guilty by association" with the insurrectionists.
Jan 6th was planned by antifa and the left. Why would they put up fencing around the capitol? Why didn’t the armed guards stop them? It’s all a hoax. Everything that the right is accused of, is something the left doesn’t want you to know about. We can go back to Russian collusion if you want.
Is that you, Q? Nice to see you back on the socialz. How bout that pedo ring in the basement of the pizza place that had no basement? That was your best, dawg. Blaming J6 on lefties is even better, but is anyone stupid enough to believe it?
Again. For the umpteenth time. I am a genuine conservative. I live in a red state. I was born in the reddest state of all. I have to hold my nose and bite my tongue just to travel through a blue area (I don't go to Austin for anything but the airport and if I can get a reasonable flight out of San Antone I do) and I have NEVER heard anyone mention, refer to, or discuss Q or Q'Anon except liberals. What is up with that? Just another bogeyman to demonize differing POVs?
Bogeyman? No. QAnon was very real for a time, and spat its conspiracy bile through 4chan and other Internet sites.
Q peddled the dangerous lie that "Hillary runs a pedo ring from the basement of a pizza parlor in Ohio," which caused an otherwise normal American to grab up his rifle, drive to the parlor, and burst in looking for pedos. Fortunately, he came to his senses when he found out the parlor had no basement and there were no pedos to be found. He admitted after arrest he'd been conned by what he'd read on the Internet from QAnon.
QAnon has become far less of a thing than during the Trump years, but people still know the term. Therefore I use "Q" and "QAnon" as shorthand for "conspiracy kooks who see the evil hand of Hillary, Trump, antifa, Hunter Biden, BLM, MAGA, Black Helicopters, and FEMA Camps" in everydamnthing.
In this case, Scott claimed that "January 6 was planned by antifa and the left." That is so corrosively bullshit that it's fair to mock the statement as inspired by Q itself.
But that in no manner establishes that there is a real Q or Q-Anon. I have never been on 4Chan but understand it to be a hotbed of quackery. I have no trouble believing some progressive whackadoodle created this bogeyman to stir the pot. Which may or may not have worked. My theories credibility is enhanced by the fact that liberals are still fanning the flames. The only ones fanning the flames. The only place I have seen it recently is TFP - both articles and comments of avowed liberals. It is a fear-mongering tool. You are better than that.
Actually, Scott, they couldn't prove that any of these men were guilty by association. They couldn't even prove that the man knew Bin Laden, let alone prove true the hearsay evidence that he was a bodyguard. That's the whole point man.
And this article didn't even mention the families, women and children, who were raped at black sites in Egypt and other countries that were hired by the CIA. It's been a while, but there was a man whose experiences were confirmed. He spoke to Congress. He was on the Rogan podcast. They had NO evidence on him at all. He saw women and children beaten and raped in front of their husbands and fathers.
Our anger could've been worse. But it was bad. And we learned little to nothing from these torture practices, which the CIA and NSA have themselves admitted.
I’ve got 22 years to save up for an Enrique Tarrio painting. Maybe he can paint a recreation of that BLM graffiti that he was arrested for vandalizing.
What do you mean by “valid”? I agree with many commenters that the timing is controversial, but it seems like normal journalism otherwise. I am not qualified to judge the guilt or innocence of any individual, but I did observe the conditions of the prison and the faces of the prisoners myself.
I read and responded to your other comment where you provided your honest assessment. That is what I was interested in. I toyed with "merit", "justified", "right" etc. but none were exactly right so I went with valid and you provided what I wanted to know. Thank you again.
No SCI stuff, just whatever was available on the internal network which was probably TS. You could learn a lot more by reading the publicly available information on e.g. NYT’s Guantanamo Docket.
Never had underwear placed on my head, but I did get punched in the face by an elderly man on hunger strike. The more serious incidents generally involved excrement being thrown at guards. Prisoner #669, Ahmed Zaid Salim Zuhair, was notorious for this behavior.
And who at The Free Press thought TODAY was the right time for this article? Since we’re already living in a Theater-of-the-Absurd world, perhaps the 911 memorial is a fitting place to display the art of terrorists who were responsible for it.
Shame on the free press for running this on 9/11. Some of us remember people jumping off the towers -- how about an article about how their relatives are doing.
Agree. The best use for this “art” would be a performance piece: burning it, or throwing it off the top of skyscrapers.
What about all the people in the world you have killed in the name of DEMOCRACY?
As a US citizen, I have very few regrets about the people my government has killed in the name of protecting both our country and that of countries allied with us going all the way back to 1776. Viet Nam might be one - those killed or imprisoned after 9/11, I have no regrets. Even if going into Iraq was pretty stupid - it at least got rid of one of the worlds biggest despots.
Democracy doesn't mean that nobody ever will be killed. People died in the American Revolution, the French Revolution, WW I and WW II to name some obvious examples. It wasn't for nothing.
Sometimes democracy comes with death. Only the lives of the defenders are worth celebrating and only their deaths are worth mourning or eulogizing.
OK. What about them? We make a lot of mistakes. But this was deliberate, an act of war, unprovoked, and a lot of innocent people just going to work on a Tuesday morning were killed, right on our own soil. Maybe you should listen to the names of the victims when they are enunciated next 9/11 to gain a little perspective.
How many young British soldiers did the revolutionaries have to kill to give you your first ammendment rights?
How many rebel soldiers did the union have to kill to free the slaves?
Leaving aside the comparative merits of these causes, please note the use of the word "soldiers" and think about it a bit.
I'm finding myself more disappointed than enlightened by FP. If this was a Bari directive, I have to wonder why she left the NYT.
What other instances do you have when you were disappointed?
Yes! So many stories from our NYC office ... like an 18-month old girl whose mother went into the office a bit early that Tuesday morning to send data to our London office...thank goodness her father decided to go to the gym instead, or she’d have grown up entirely without parents. Don’t get me started.
I could only imagine the deeply poignant and emotional art pieces that have been created by those relatives.
Agreed! I am beginning to regret becoming a subscriber to this site.
Exactly., I ran across 60 minutes last night doing a 9 11 story interviewing the firefighters and showing footage of the towers being run into and then collapsing and the people jumping from the top floors and the sound of the bodies hitting. It is still raw.
And the FPruns this bullshit art story about the poor artists. Give us a break. If this isn’t completely fucking (sorry) tone deaf I don’t know what is.
" I ran across 60 minutes last night doing a 9 11 story interviewing the firefighters and showing footage of the towers being run into and then collapsing and the people jumping from the top floors and the sound of the bodies hitting. It is still raw."
9/11 ( A Documentary by Gédéon & Jules Naudet )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seOwa0trNEQ
I think that’s the point of running it today. Not all of them were “terrorists”. Many weren’t even charged. So does our society believe in innocent until proven guilty, or don’t we?
Enemy combatants generally aren't treated the same as citizens.
So do we do carve outs for permanent residents? Visitors? It’s due process for me, but not for some of those people who aren’t “citizens”?
There’s “not treated the same”, and there’s detained for up to 20 years or more, with a side of torture thrown in. That’s not a moral position I’m comfortable with. Ymmv.
And unless you are suggesting we have simply released “enemy combatants”, it would seem that our initial determination about some/many of those people was simply wrong.
I think we have released enemy combatants. Just ones that were not deemed dangerous enough or important enough to keep holding.
We traded a big-name arms dealer to Russia in exchange for a women's basketball player who had legitimately broke Russian law. Don't think for a moment that we don't release enemy combatants when those in power choose to do so.
But if you know that, why didn’t the CIA or whoever is charge know that, and use that info to charge and convict and properly sentence those people, rather than detain for a bunch of years then release them. If some were “traded”….fine. But is that all or even most of them? And what is your evidence for suggesting that, if that’s what you’re suggesting?
I don't "know" that. I can only draw reasonable inferences based on what U.S. officials have done in the past.
The fact that someone is not arrested and charged does not necessarily mean they are not a criminal. It just means that the authorities have not been able to collect the proper kind of evidence that those authorities believe would actually result in their conviction.
Consider the case of Josh Powell. In 2009, his wife, Susan Powell, disappeared. The West Valley, Utah police actually collected a LOT of evidence that suggested very strongly that he had murdered her. In fact, after he murdered his sons and committed suicide in 2012 in Graham, Washington, the Washington Prosecutor's Office opined that THEY would have charged him with Susan's murder based on the evidence West Valley had. But without her body (which, to this day, has not been found), they were hesitant to bring those charges. That is certainly a case where the authorities "knew" he was a murderer, despite fearing they did not have the evidence to prove it.
Or here's something a little closer to home for me. A decade ago, I worked for four months as a teacher/tutor at one of the WWASP schools, which are basically reform schools for the kids of rich parents. I could sense that there were serious problems. The school was not the professional institution that it was touted to parents to be. The principal did not have an education degree; in fact, she was formerly the receptionist. The people "counseling" the students did not have the necessary degrees or certifications to do so. And the facility was largely in horrible shape, with parent visits confined to "nice" areas.
The only way a person stayed employed there was either to join in the bullying culture or to keep their head down and their mouth very firmly shut. I was not willing to do either of those things, so that was the only job I was ever fired from.
But even though I was disturbed by what I saw there, I never saw anything that could have led to a conviction. It wasn't until about 3 years later that a student confided to a teacher that the guy who ran the school was sexually abusing her. This teacher went (as I would have done) to the authorities, doing her duty as a mandatory reporter. For that, the school fired her. (She did win a wrongful termination suit.)
Finally the school was investigated by serious levels of law enforcement. And one of the things that came out during that process was that all of the local authorities *knew* there were issues at the school. One of the biggest reasons they didn't shut it down was because whichever agency did so would become financially responsible for the kids until their parents came to get them.
The head of the school was tried and found guilty of abuse. I was not surprised, due to the things I "knew" about him. But those things had all been on the level of impressions and suspicions based on his words and behavior, not the kind of hard evidence required to convict someone in court.
SO?
Glad to see there's true free thinkers and not just rabid authoritarians in this comment section. Yes, innocent until proven guilty is how it works. That's one of the civilizing ideas of the Enlightenment, and something we should NEVER forget or throw away.
But on 9/11 out of any other possible day?
This was intentional, man.
I'm really disappointed in TFP. I wouldn't have minded this story the day after. Today, I would have liked any sort of reminder about the bravery and sacrifice of people like, say, the NYC firefighters or the ordinary citizens of Flight 93.
Instead, we have to hear about this (potentially innocent) guy's stupid artwork.
That's totally valid. The timing is a bit about pulling attention by being different, maybe? I don't know since I'm not the one who published it.
I'm just on an internal journey trying to figure out why the response to 9/11 never sat well with me and why it feels SO MUCH like the discomfort I have with the response to covid.
The themes I can see with both are a) fear/hysteria from overblowing how much of a threat something is and b) dehumanizing a group as a response.
The response to 9/11 extremely questionable and not well handled (and I'm not even talking about the invasion of Iraq). But, again, I think it's just very poor taste to run this article on 9/11.
As to dehumanizing a group as a response: perhaps we may have done some of that, but let's not forget that it was mainly Saudi Arabian nationals who believed they were doing God's will by killing infidel Americans who started this whole thing. Who's dehumanizing who?
That's true; it would have been easy enough to wait at least 24 hours before publishing it.
Wow, you go from labeling a group of people as "rabid authoritarians" to dehumanization in a pretty short space. Hmmm.
Really? So, 9/12 would have been cool?
Well, to be fair, probably 98% rabid authoritarians.
True and I agree. Just not today. Sounds petty but it struck the wrong chord to plan and publish it on 9/11.
Hmm, I can see that. Comes off as a little attention-seeking or not well thought out.
"Yes, innocent until proven guilty is how it works"
But let me guess your next thought
"But not Donald Trump"
Yes, Donald Trump, too. The Enlightenment ideas of how justice works-- and the more ancient principles they're based on-- have zero exceptions.
I'm fine with ideological consistency pissing everyone off hahaha.
So you must believe all the people murdered on 9/11 were guilty of something thus deserving a death sentence?
That's not how that works at all.
Obviously those deaths were tragic and unjustified. They were obviously innocent people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
***Revenge will never bring those people back though***
NOTHING that was done as a result can ever bring them back, and none of it made life better for the people still here, *including the families of the victims.* Not the Patriot Act, not the stupid shit we still do in airports now, not bombing countries that most Americans weren't even aware of before then. Certainly making people more afraid didn't help, and normalizing "enhanced interrogation" certainly did nothing to bring back the victims of 9/11 OR the world we knew before that day.
Same way lockdowns and mandates didn't save people from covid, they just made life shittier and the country less free while they died anyways.
I always got the sense that the response was a about revenge and there was an element of dehumanization towards Middle Easterners.
The good news is that Americans are discovering that Middle Easterners tend to be very anti-gay and especially anti-trans so alliances are starting to form now that there's a new unpopular group to focus on. That's sarcasm btw.
Lmao sometimes you have to laugh at how much things suck.
Yeah, I get it, but running a story about artwork from a guy who was in Gitmo on 9/11 of any other possible day out of the other 364 days of the year feels like a slap in the face.
Let me hear about this guy's stupid art another day. Today I want to remember the firefighters, policemen, and all the ordinary Americans who acted with bravery to save their fellow citizens lives.
We could learn something from that.
Bari had a post recently about precisely not doing things that stick to a prevailing narrative. It’s easy to support a “counter” narrative when it’s actually your narrative. But the test is whether you support a counter narrative when it actually counters your own. If not, then I submit what you want isn’t a counter narrative, but simply your preferred narrative.
I think you're missing the point I'm trying to make.
I get that this guy may have a story to tell. I get that this story may actually have some sort of value to it.
But give me a freaking break posting this on 9/11. Obviously, these guys at TFP don't give a shit about the firefighters, cops, and ordinary Americans who died that day.
I didn't expect them to wave the flag and beat the drum, but this is just insulting, man.
I remember the story they posted on the anniversary of the Iraq invasion. I thought that was great. Very insightful.
This? It's hard to swallow, man. In fact I'm cancelling my sub. Bari can take her narrative of looking at 9/11 from a different perspective and sell it to any lefty elitist willing to buy it. This poor boy from Alabama ain't.
I have no idea what Bari does or does not GAF about. But considering she’s a New Yorker (at least at 1 time), my default prior would NOT be that she doesn’t care about 9/11 first responders etc.
For me, I come here for a diverse POV. But to each their own.
I get it, but there's a difference between having a diverse POV and just showing how detached you are from your reader base. This, IMO, did very much so the latter.
That isn't obvious at all... I'm sure they do care about cops and firefighters. What you don't seem to care about, at all, is actually reading the article.
1/6 anger is getting people thrown in prison for 22 years without having been present.
9/11 anger saw this man tortured and held for 18 years on suspicion, without definitive proof, that he was...at most....a hired bodyguard who may or may not have had any idea what his boss was up to.
See Ben, if you read the article, you'll find that they have no evidence this guy was involved in 9/11 at all. Supposedly he was, at some point, Bin Laden's bodyguard. They never proved that either. So... If 9/11 is the reason we held and tortured this man without evidence, today is the perfect day to be reminded that we need to control out tempers if we really want to be the city on the hill.
With the current administration, I don't think we're a city on the hill at all.
We believe in that in American courts of law. Gizmo is not an American court of law, by conscious and specific design. I am good with that.
That’s a fairly morally fluid position. But that’s your deal.
How is that morally fluid? They are not accused of crimes that would require prosecution in American courts. They are not members of a standing army so do not meet the requirement for coverage/protections under the Geneva Convention. ICBW but I think American military tribunals have jurisdiction over American military members, not foreign combatants. Lastly, if Gitmo is so outrageous where is the UN et al outrage? These guys seem to have pretty competent representation and their lawyers can't come up with a basis to free them or, more importantly for the purposes of this discussion, a way to invoke the jurisdiction of an American court to review their plight. Lastly, this situation does serve a deterrent effect.
It’s morally fluid because your justification boils down to jurisdiction. So anything goes as long as it’s outside of jurisdiction. It’s not “right” but rules of right and wrong don’t apply outside of jurisdiction so fly at’er. That counts as fluid to me. Ymmv.
Jurisdiction matters.
It is what gives a court authority to act. It has Bern a long time but I am pretty sure that is what American courts said on the matter when actions were brought years ago - this court has no authority to act. And I actually acknowledged that Gitmo it is an imperfect solution. I just said I am okay with it. Gizmo, not the torture prior thereto. That is because I do not have a "right" solution. Nor do you.
Edited to add you changed your position. You said my position was morally fluid before I said the word jurisdiction.
Not fluid at all. The laws of war are not The US constitution.
You're right about that they're not American courts of law by design. If they were so trials would have been mandated regardless if there was enough evidence or not, or the inmates would have had to be released. They're not POW's. They're not enemy combatants since there is no military affiliation. They're suspected terrorists. Convenient that it's on another country's territory, American jurisprudence and due process need not be followed.
But if my memory serves, and please help me out here, I think this move offshore to house these men was aided by every state in the Union showing extreme reluctance to have them in prisons in their jurisdictions, thus allowing the US military to find other means.
I think you are right. My only quibble is that I don't think this was a military decision but rather a political one. And my regard for those is certainly down the tubes. As I recall though there was much discussion at the time and they are considered "enemy combatants" or some such term. This, as I recall, was because they were not considered criminal defendants (which would mean trials in American courts in the States) or POWs (which would require treatment pursuant to the Geneva Convention). Rather they were/are viewed as combatants. I am actually okay with this in a way - if they are actual terrorists they elected to wage irregular war so irregular consequences are justified IMO. But there is no doubt there is room for mistakes. There are mistakes made in American courts of law. OTOH there have been released Gitmo detainees that returned to terrorism. You know these guys have been represented by some very skilled lawyers. There were efforts to get them recourse in American courts but the courts refused ostensibly for lack of jurisdiction. Which is valid, a court has to have power to act or it is a futile effort. But as I recall there was also discussion about an inability to have trials in courts of record because much of the evidence would involve classified information. And that torture would have been raised and that was denied for ages.
Congress could address this.
Good comment. Re Congress - they don't address much these days, for all the reasons we agree on. Guantanamo? Torture in CIA black holes? Classified info? They wouldn't touch that with a ten foot Pole (Ukrainian?).
Lame attempt at a joke..
Ha ha ha. But you know a lot of the nation's ills trace back to Congress and its failures to act on matters of great importance. I was licensed shortly after the Reagan amnesty when the pro.ise was made for immigration reform. I was interested because I thought it would be a good field of practice. I have spent my adult life waiting for the promised reform. They stood by as bystanders to a 20 year "war" in Afghanistan. And I don't get it. They are all power mad, so use some.
It's fair to say that there are certain situations where a reasonable person would conclude that a person is guilty, and yet where the way in which evidence was obtained would cause it to be thrown out, or where some of it is circumstantial.
It's also fair to ask: should there be different rules for some categories of suspects or for some categories of crimes...or whatever context applies?
It is also fair to say: with no other option, the only choice was to keep such categories of people in a Gitmo, and to allow any arbitrary rules the administration of the time decides to impose.
But, are you also advocating that future American governments should have arbitrary power to take any actions they like? Are you throwing up your hands and saying: we cannot take the experience of Gitmo and come up with objective rules that we can use in the future? That we can't come up with laws that will apply to special circumstances? That we throw up our hands and say: no rules of law are possible, we'll just give the president free reign?
I am trying to get people to understand that the Gitmo detainees are not an American criminal justice matter. Period. People, lots of people are conflating "crime" with "terrorism" and what the US government did to those accused of terrorism with criminal prosecution. They are apples and oranges. The US government opted to fight terrorism by going after it abroad. You can debate whether or not that was justified but that is not what I am doing. I am saying, as clearly as I can, whatever the Gitmo detainees are, they are not accused in American courts of law. Because they are not accused in American courts of law that myriad of rights, privileges, immunities, and defenses that accrue to the accused in an American court of law do not apply to them. Nor as that system is designed could they ever.
Because prosecution of crime starts with a crime in a given locale (or locales) which establishes venue and gives a court in that geographic location the authority (jurisdiction) to act. We have contorted that somewhat with mail and wire fraud statutes but every crime prosecuted in the US has either an accused or a victim in the court's venue and jurisdiction. Some terrorists acts can be, and have been, prosecuted in American courts. But the Gitmo detainees committed their acts overseas. Their acts were considered terrorism or terrorism related. Terrorism does not target a specific victim. Rather any casualty of terrorism is good for the terrorist; by definition the goal of terrorism is to shock and instill fear in the the terrorized. Thus there could never by a witness to testify in a terrorist plot that was thwarted. No complaining witness, no ability to charge a crime.
As for your first paragraph, in an American prosecution what a reasonable person would say is merely their opinion and irrelevant. Unless they are a seated juror in the subject prosecution in which case, as long as arrived at in accordance with the law pertaining to juror conduct, their opinion, along with that of their fellow jurors, is determinative. Guilty or not guilty. And admissable circumstantial evidence is evidence. Guilty convictions are obtained multiple times every day based on circumstantial evidence. Other evidence is indeed suppressed, for a variety of reasons, including unlawful search and seizure.
As for your last paragraph and it's queries I have not opined at all about future events. But to answer your questions, I am by nature and training not a fan of arbitrariness. It undermines the rule of law. I am also not a fan of unrestrained governmental power and the folly thereof has been brought home to me in a big way in the last decade. (And I think it should have been to my fellow Americans too FWIW.) The idea of giving the "president free reign" is at this point misleading because the president is not calling the shots, rather it is the unelected, unaccountable career bureaucrats in the executive branch alphabet agencies who pick the weakest candidate for president and throw their considerable power into seeing him or her elected. BTW some of those career bureaucrats are the ones who designed the Gitmo solution. So draw your own conclusions about that. I would hope that we always analyze and grow from experience. I think that is a human condition. Whether or not the American government is still capable of that is anybody's guess.
Lastly, I assume my lack of regard for Gitmo detainees is apparent and what draws this continued response. FWIW I think when you, either as an individual or an informal, loosely aligned group undertake to harm people merely because they are Americans you should be stopped. If that means hunting them like predatory animals and locking them away forever I am okay with that. It is their choice and I think choices have and should have consequences. That being said I have the same sympathy for those falsely accused of terrorism as I do for those falsely accused of crimes prosecuted in American courts. And it is considerable.
Thanks for taking the time for such a detailed reply. I do appreciate it.
Thank you for taking the time to communicate about it. IMO you are right to think in terms of the future and what there is to learn from Gitmo.
Gizmo was a Gremlin.
I suggest you volunteer to go to Afghanistan or Iran and try to collect evidence against Islamic terrorists. Don't forget to get a warrant for everything you want to get and be sure to observe strict chain of custody for it. And don't bring in anything that might be "fruit of the poisioned tree" based on information from questionable sources.
Prisoners of war are not given trials. They are confined in POW camps until the war is over.
POWs are specifically protected by Geneva conventions. The issue with gitmo is precisely because they are not labelled POWs, so no one seems to have legal jurisdiction. So yeah, both “fruit” but you’re mixing apples with oranges bud.
In theory, yes. But in practice, no. Depending on your political orientation, there are different sets of rules.
Steve, SAME applies for some of the J6 rioters, uh excuse me “Insurrectionist” Where is the “innocent till proven guilty” in their cases? Many are still waiting for their “speedy trials”
The point is, TODAY of ALL days should be devoted to the innocent 3,000 + survivors. Or, at the very least, TFP might have included an article honoring & remembering them, too!
What is it about the WOKE Left always wanting to play the gotch game of, “Well, just because all THOSE innocent people were targeted & killed on 9/11 shouldn’t override the horrors of what has happened to some innocent detainees. USA bad”
Take a page from the Jews.......hunt them down and shoot them. All this based on "war justice". These are not normal crimes....they do not deserve a day in our courts.
They don't even know for sure if the main guy written about in the article did anything... He was accused, without evidence, of having been Bin Laden's bodyguard at some point. They tortured and held the man for 18 years because of that, because we were all angry about 9/11.
Some people are very angry about 1/6, and now Taario is in prison for 22 years without even having been present at the capitol.
If you don't see the problem here, then maybe you aren't one of the good guys.
Alrighty then….
Yes, but perhaps not today.
The Free Press publishing this on 9/11 is in exceedingly poor taste. I'm shocked that anyone would think publishing this today is a good idea.
JChrist............what about all the family's who have lost loved ones in war made by the US?
One time only you had a threat and you all went crazy.
You think war is fun until it comes to the US.
Uh, I'll try and answer on behalf of 99% of this discussion board, "Fuck Them Kids."
Why not? 9/11 is what caused us to imprison and torture the man for 18 years, with only hearsay evidence that he MIGHT have been Bin Laden's bodyguard. We got nothing out of it, except for a few marines and cia agents getting their sick rocks off. Today is THEE day to run this article.
Couldn’t agree more. I love so much about the free press but reading this today completely took me by surprise
Lots passing for "art" these days, huh?
Lol
Thank you for writing what many of us were thinking as we read this article. It was bad timing and insensitive to the families that lost loved ones on this day.
Well you know, for Bari Weiss and Co. the real victims of 9/11 are the Islamofascists who killed thousands of people and tried to murder the president. Won't someone think of how they feel!
Why not?
None of these people were put on trial!
Rabbani, the artist in question, was held for eighteen years and was never convicted of a crime. He never had his day in court. Not enough prosecutorial evidence, apparently. But because he was ensnared in the bureaucratic nightmare of being swept up in the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack on American soil, he languished. And now suddenly he's released, after being held all this time with no due process. I understand your anger, Lady in the Lake, but how do you know this guy is responsible for anything that happened that day?
The people held at Guantanamo weren’t just random Arabic men plucked off the streets. Each had some connection to terrorist organizations. I’m not a lawyer and don’t even play one on TV, but I understand that the term “enemy combatant” does not confer the same rights as our judicial system otherwise confers on the accused.
The inclusion of an article about a Guantanamo prisoner on 9/11, instead of one about the lives lost, and more changed that day, seems particularly tone-deaf and insensitive to the colossal losses suffered that day.
And yet they were never able to prove that many of these detainees were involved in 9/11, as was pointed out in the article. They were swept up by accusations and tortured in the wake of 9/11. Have you seen the government's evidence that the men written about in this article did anything to us? I haven't.
I wonder if the Jan 6 detainees will be allowed to create and sell art?
And if leftists will fawn over them and host them and write about them?
Which is worse: this article or Joe Biden saying 1,000 Hawaiians burning alive reminds him of his kitchen fire?
Must I choose? Can I not damn them both...?
Yeah but the Biden thing is so much worse.
What he did was like reading this article over a bullhorn at ground zero while it’s still smoking.
Did he say that?
Agreed, I'd like to know as well.
I'm surprised I made it through as much of this apologist rag-column as I did. I suppose this is what a Free Press means, even if it is misinformation (what we used to call enemy propaganda).
Yes and I’m sure their prison will be a tropical island with a soccer field and a private chef who specializes in culturally sensitive cuisine.
Keeping men in prison without proving their guilt was wrong and they should have been released if there was no evidence to convict them. "Enhanced interrogation" was nothing but torture and should never have happened. The late Senator McCain said a man will confess to anything under torture to get it to stop. There are maximum security prisons in the US for the ones convicted of terrorism and Gitmo should have been closed long ago.
Also, prisoners of war don’t get speedy trials.
If we were just randomly rounding up innocent Arab guys we would have needed to use Hawaii, not Gitmo.
All of these guys were scumbags; it’s just a little hard to have a regular proving of guilt when all of the evidence is in a country that beheads people and doesn’t have electricity.
You are displaying exactly the same kind of cynicism as those who called the concentration camp Theresienstadt "that beautiful city the Fuehrer gave to the jews".
Interesting. You are brazenly profiteering off of The Holocaust right now. Are there any historical examples of that?
Oh look, a European name. No chance you’re a depraved antisemite.
Very bad defence. So predictable. And so helpless at the same time.
I guess You know what I think You are, without me having to spell it out. It's all too obvious. Your posting told Your story and gave it all away.
Scumbags????????
Two things can be true, Jenny Poo:
1) countries where women wear sheets are jam-packed with evil psychos and we captured a bunch of them
2) it’s not worth the human suffering and resources to invade and stay for 20 years when you can just close the border
Read the article...they were determined to be releasable... no country (even their own) will take them. That is how big of Scumbags they are!
How do you know they were all scumbags?
I agree that keeping men in prison indefinitely without a trial is wrong. A program should be fashioned to try or release the remaining prisoners within a time certain. I don't agree that enhanced interrogation is necessarily torture. Celebrating the art of Gitmo detainees doesn't seem like the best way to commorate 9/11. As for McCain, I blame him and his poor campaign for eight years of Obama and, indirectly, for the travesty of the Biden regime.
" I don't agree that enhanced interrogation is necessarily torture."
Anyone who thinks that waterboarding and all the other "enhanced interrogation" we did isn't torture is hereby invited to a session of six of it streamed live on YouTube. I suspect you will change your mind rather quickly when the first gallon of water goes into your lungs.
The way the term enhanced interrogation was used was to cover up the reality this was torture and not simply aggressive questioning. The point I was making about John McCain was he had been a prisoner of war, been tortured himself and knew it didn’t really work to obtain information. Even people who knew absolutely nothing would babble out a story to please the interrogators.
My favorite thing about John McCain is the rousing speech he gave to neo-Nazis in Ukraine when we overthrew their government.
Why am I not surprised that You say that?
It’s not exactly subtle. I’m obviously saying that I like it because it exposes McCain as a bit of a nasty creep.
But you have never told the truth in your life so please feel free to pretend I meant something else.
I’m shocked and horrified by the number of commenters here do not even seem aware of the US role in promoting and perpetrating torture, terrorism and death squads in other countries, or the Blowback that it engenders.
Why couldn't these prisoners have been sent back to their homeland, which would have been punishment enough?
Read the article...they were determined to be releasable... no country (even their own) will take them. That is how big of Scumbags they are!
Don't forget Ron de Santis who was an overseer of torture here. Now running for President??????????
I didn’t know that. I was unimpressed with him at the debate.
You still don’t. She’s passing on an unsubstantiated rumor from Rolling Stone and other far left media that was started by a former Gitmo prisoner recently. Military personnel and others stationed with DeSantis say he did nothing of the sort.
I’m not a DeSantis supporter, but I have no respect for smear campaigns.
Me too. Awful man.
You are showing exactly the same kind of cynicism as those who used to call the concentration camp Theresienstadt "that beautiful city the Fuehrer gave to the jews".
I'm disgusted.
Jan 6 is not a direct comparison, regardless of where you stand on Jan 6. The detainees have all been charged, alto several hundred are still awaiting trial. That is definitely not swift justice more than 2.5 years later.
But some at Gitmo were never even charged. For over 20 years. Plus the torture.
So maybe you could argue that they are on the same spectrum of lack/failure of due process. But they are pretty widely separated on that spectrum.
The comparison is wrong on so many levels.
Why was the concentration camp in Guantanamo opened in the first place?
To deprive the inmates there of all those rights the Jan 6 felons still enjoy. To be represented by a lawyer of their choice, not to be tortured, to have a speedy trial......
Guantanamo was the US "going Nazi", "going Gestapo". Bypassing the legal system to be able to hold, torture and kill people as You please without having to answer to anyone. Exercising "thug justice".
I think there is a legal distinction between the rights of a US citizen and the rights of someone "visiting" this country. Are any of the "Gitmo guys" citizens of the United States?
I forgot. "Visitors" traditionally don't enjoy any rights in Your country. In the old days "visitors" even used to be put to work as slaves in the cotton fields.
Define Torture. A note All things 9-11/GWOT is one of my obsessions. II like to say I've forgotten more about this than most people know.
Contrary to what Hollywood and The Left (but I repeat my self) say thee was NO torture.
Sorry bud, I’m not prepared to venture into an alternate reality where nothing is torture. I’ll just borrow the SCOTUS litmus for pornography: you know it when you see it. Again, ymmv.
I didn't say "nothing is torture". I said they (Islamic Terrorists captured on the battlefield) were Not Tortured. BTW Define Torture.
KSM would count off the time allowed for him to be waterboarded.
Maybe you can tell us what torture is in your book. You’re the first I’ve come across who suggests their treatment didn’t amount to torture. Most people I’ve come across have shared the same “you know of when you see it” threshold I have.
Torture is the deliberate infliction of Severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties.
Severe being the Operative word.
IF you are going to Torture someone you don't have Doctors Psychologists standing by to insure the person is not physically harmed. You Don't have written regulations stating Exactly what is allowed and what isn't. As I stated above KSM knew this and would countdown the time remaining.
just asking the question that's all
And will they get servile news pieces like this one in their honor?
If the Jan 6th prisoners are allowed to create and sell art, we won’t find out about that in TFP. There’s a blackout on them here.
I would hope so. It had a calming effect on the prisoners. If it's about rehabilitation rather than punishment, that's exactly the kind of thing that should be going on.
I agree about the art but that is not the point of this piece.
I supported the whole GWOT wholeheartedly for many years, and believed everything I was told. I knew one guy killed in Fallujah, and corresponded with a number of people both while they were deployed and after, including an Army Medic working in the Triangle of Death at the height of those horrors.
Having said that, I will say I have come to largely share the perspective of much of the anti-war Left, which seems in some ways to have been accidentally right.
The CIA in my view was ABSOLUTELY involved in planning and perpetrating 9/11, which to my mind means at least some of these people may actually be, and have been, innocent. If so, the analogy with the J6 political prisoners is absolutely apt.
Delta had Bin Laden trapped at Tora Bora early on, as former CAG officer “Dalton Fury” wrote in his memoir. His superiors stalled and drlayed until Bin Laden escaped.
I was also told in a bar in San Diego around 2005 by a guy who claimed to have worked for Blackwater that we had exact lications in Pakistan for Bin Laden, Al Zawahiri and in his words “all of them.”
Its not unreasonable to suppose this whole thing was created by a faction in our governmemt, then artificially extended by the same faction.
I am very patriotic, but it is very clear to me there are rotten elements on the public payroll.
It is ironically appropriate that we learned today from one of JFK’s Secret Service agents that there had to have been a second shooter.
Truth is always will be what it is. It has no mandate to be pleasant, congenial, or easily acceptable.
The notion that the US government participated in the planning and perpetrating of 9/11 is a bridge too far for me. That being said it certainly changed the world we lived in and creation of Homeland Security, which I thought reasonable at the time, has been a devastating blow to civil rights, perhaps a death knell.
Thats my gut instinct, about the CIA, but I certainly would love to be wrong.
But the Patriot Act certainly seems to me to have been a planned consequence.
I have seen other things that support that.
Utter BS
If you think the CIA is actually that competent I have a bridge to sell you. I don't think most people understand the caliber of the average intelligence agency employee.
I'm sorry you're believing the utter BS you're writing here.
You're taking credit away from OBL and Al Queda for one of the most audacious and deadly terrorist attacks in modern history.
Not "credit" -- responsibility and blame.
That too but most insane conspiracy theorists need to be reminded in a more succinct manner that they're letting murderous terrorists off the hook because of their stupidity
How did he collapse Tower 7? It was not hit by a plane.
https://www.nist.gov/pao/questions-and-answers-about-nist-wtc-7-investigation
https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GOVPUB-C13-4d4c17460292ee57ef313f6491fa8d1e
Enjoy the reads
I’ve watched the original presentation. Their claim is that the “combustion of office furnishings caused a symmetrical collapse at near freefall velocity of a 47 story office building. That is ludicrous.
And their computer model does not simulate the full collapse.
Professor of Forensic Structural Engineering Leroy Hulsey spent two years creating a detailed model and concluded that only the near simultaneous failure of all supports could explain what was seen. That means explosives and cutting charges.
Dan Rather said as he watched it that it looked like a controlled demolition. Its obvious. You have to work not to see it.
Next time you go in an office building imagine spending as much time as you like dowsing everything with a flamethrower filled with jet fuel. You would NEVER be able to collapse a building. Ever. Even if you spent weeks at it.
Dan Rather is a know nothing teleprompter reader.
WT7 was burning for HOURS before it collapsed. No one even died in it's collapse.
Again, you have zero proof for your claims vs what I provided.
"The CIA in my view was ABSOLUTELY involved in planning and perpetrating 9/11"
Cite Sources!
I see no need to. You can believe what you want to believe, and research what you want to research.
Tower 7 was brought down by explosives, and an honest investigation would have proven that. Those are facts. Everything else is speculation.
I have (as I have stated all things 9-11/GWOT was an obsession of mine for 10 years read darn near Everything I could on this) I've read about building 7, And You are wrong.
"an honest investigation would have proven that"
Translation: I'm right and they are wrong and all part of THE PLOT.
BTW I didn't see any Facts in your rely, just opinions. As a buddy of mine once said "Opinions are like assholes, everyone has got one."
Arguing with fools is tiring work.
It gives me something to do. :-)
Watch any of the videos of the collapse. If you think the “combustion of office furnishings”—which is a direct quote from the final NIST report—could cause a modern skyscraper to collapse like that, then you have manifestly rendered yourself immune to reason.
On this issue I AM right. Period. You can agree with me or be wrong. I never use language like that, but it is well warranted here.
If you want facts, read Leroy Hulseys final report at ae911truth.org.
Nope, that "source" is as accurate as Pravda.
Lol, keep spouting your utter bullshit.
Lol. "Accidentally right."
Honestly, really. Not equivalent on any measure.
honestly really it doesn't need to be equvilent. Its a question
Or if they will be sent to Gitmo.
Will be interesting to see if Donald Trump is able to create any piece of art once he will do his time. Yes he shall also have that opportunity. I'm all for it.
Another deranged idiot heard from. Could there be anything less satisfying than seeing a President of the United States locked up? You must be ill to think this would help our country in any way. Whether you support him or not, denigrating our country to serve a political objective is absurd. No wonder we're in trouble.
Of course there is something "less satisfying than seeing a President of the United States locked up", it's seeing a common thieve and thug residing in the White House and now You even see the next one of this kind residing there. If You Americans do not smarten up soon and start to make better choices at the polls You might as well add a "president wing" to one of Your prisons.
The "deranged idiots" are in fact those who vote for "deranged idiots" at presidential elections and those who believe that former presidents should be above the law.
By the way.....who did You vote for?
Why don't you mind your own damn business.
Stop trying to cancel people, Theresa.
GO AWAY COMPROF
Why don't You mind Yours?
BECAUSE I LIVE HERE‼️I AM AN AMERICAN AND I HAPPEN TO LIKE THIS COUNTRY ‼️
hopefully.
I writer this with a heavy heart, but Ms. Weiss, if you're reading this, what the hell are you doing?
Maybe I'm just tired and empathy-fatigued today after working a hellish weekend in emergency medicine, but you pick TODAY to run a story about GITMO detainees? REALLY??
I respect the hell out of what you did. Leaving one of the top posts in your field to start something on your own. That takes some serious brass ones.
But, I have to say, more and more I am seeing the lefty-sensibilities creep out of the editorial decisions of this paper. I get that you covered stuff that the MSM doesn't touch. Good stuff, I applaud that.
But THIS? For those of us that LIVE here in the NYC area, 9-11 is no abstraction, it's a REAL thing. I thought you knew that, or at least empathized with it. You're exhibiting the same sort of tone-deafness that you accuse the NYT et al. of doing. Come ON Bari... I mean REALLY?
For as much as I respect your courage - and I do - I fear that you are building a new NYT/WP. I want news coverage that is DOWN THE MIDDLE and exhibits RESPECT for it's subject. For the REAL America that doesn't live on the UWS or LA. For the truck drivers, the nurses, the convenience store workers, the everyday people that make our world run. EVERY DAY.
I get that as an gutsy entrepreneur you are supposed to lead/create the market. But man this one stung. GOD BLESS those who died on 9-11 and their families. And GOD BLESS America.
Ditto all the above. I've also been bothered by-
TheFP offices opening in-- LA and NYC.
And the debate happening in --LA.
I realize her home is in LA, but there's something about investing in the places that seem to be the heart of darkness that doesn't sit well with me.
I'm not ready to unsubscribe, but reading this today makes me feel dirty.
I follow a local blog and appreciated re-seeing several memorials today (ironically, from the NY Times...)
Following 9/11 the New York Times ran Portraits of Grief (https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/pages/national/portraits/index.html) profiling many of those lost in the 9/11 attacks.
Great....so now you have a problem where their offices are....
Hell a firearms company I've purchased from had an excellent 9/11 tribute today.
Love the passion in your comments, Sgd427. I agree with you completely. Sad to see Bari take this path. I have been an admirer of her as well.
Sgd427, thanks for writing that. I agree with all of it. What a sad presentation on this 911 Memorial Day. It seems like such an insult to the families of that awful day.
I couldn't have said it any better myself. I think you're 100% right.
Don't worry. Bari is FAR from a lefty.
An interesting story - thanks for telling it. It led me to wonder, how many captives from prisons run by Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other radical Islamist extremist groups were similarly cared for and allowed to develop their artistic skills, then ultimately set free. Let me know if you need a calculator for this one.
It's hard to be an artist with your head cut off.
Agreed. Someone ask Peter Kassig, James Foley, Kenji Goto and other ISIS prisoners about the "humanity" of their captors.
Look at that painting of Rabbani's prison "cell". It looks like a pretty comfortable apartment.
iI's what makes us different.
Yeah....always good to measure to the lowest standard.
The timing of this article is in extremely poor taste. This is the first time I’ve been disappointed by the free press but man is it a doozy.
Freedom of speech is one thing. Releasing an article about prisoners who orchestrated and carried out the most horrific terrorist attack to try and make us feel sorry for them on the anniversary of the attack is a whole other level.
Rethinking my support of FP now.
I mean it’s pretty disrespectful but we live in a world where Joe Biden wanted the anniversary of 9/11 to be about him, a lifelong parasite with zero skills, which resulted in 13 kids getting blown up. So in context it’s really not that bad.
Time to Budlight it?
Lol.
Yes! Let the Leopards lose!
Oh poor Americans they got attacked.
Take a look at what you have done in other country's before you bleat like a lamb!
Your comments are in extremely poor taste. Yes, we got attacked and many innocent people died. You seem to think that we deserved it. Take a look in the mirror before you post such hate-filled comments.
She is a sick soul.
Look in a mirror!
Coming from you I just 😂😂😂
I think you are all hypocrites. It's Ok for the US to arrange 'Coups' in other country's and fight wars because you don't like a new President!
Chile
Guatemala
Iran
Sandanistas
and more and more..........................
You sound vaccinated
Y'all, we need to boycott and demonetize her "Jennifer's Substack". She's got to go!
Very democratic.
Someone please send artist Hunter to Gitmo before it closes. There's a future for him after all.
Love this.
Laughed outloud at this one
Good 234. Very good. It gave me a very wicked grin.
Wow Bari. Could you imagine a story about how Nazi guards created artwork at Auschwitz?
This story is totally inappropriate as people who’ve lost loved ones are still suffering.
Gitmo is the Ritz compared to those who burned to death or jumped to their death to avoid fire or were on those planes knowing they were going to crash and never see loved ones again or Firefighters who gave their lives.
For all the great stories you’ve had, you just lost me as a subscriber.
Some things are just beyond the pale and this is one of them. So long.
Bari is on a bit of a ‘delete your account’ hot streak right now but I still love her.
Maybe on the anniversary of the OKC bombing we will get an article about Timothy Mcveigh’s GI Joe collection.
omg. i burst out laughing.
That would be hilarious to be honest.
THAT'S who you remind me of!
Or, as someone else pointed out, "prisoners" of ISIS and the rest of the savages. Who BTW want Israel and all Jews exterminated.
Nobody seems to get this; they miss the hugeness of this problem.
In some respects the whole reason I am a Christian is because I think there IS a struggle between good and evil. And my version of good is Christ. But we as a people are so reluctant to identify anything or anyone as evil or an enemy. I believe in love your neighbor, I really do. I believe in turning the other cheek, but is that wise when you have an enemy that openly expresses the desire to annihilate you?
Agree and unsubed as well.
They owe the victim's families of 9/11 an apology instead of this garbage.
"Adolph Eichman used art as a coping mechanism during his pretrial confinement"
Yeah doesn't sound so good.
Next September 11th you should do a puff piece about Hunter Biden’s paintings that depict his father’s successful withdrawal from Afghanistan and Hunter’s unsuccessful withdrawal from that one stripper from Arkansas.
The subtitle of this piece is, "A story about the prison that will never close. The men who became artists inside it. And some uncomfortable truths about America."
Here is an uncomfortable truth. These thugs get three hots and a cot in clean cells with good food.
The left always likes to portray the US a brutal shit hole police state. Go visit a Middle Eastern prison and see what the living conditions are like, Turkey for example.
You want brutality. If you step out of line in a Muslim prison, you get the crap beaten out of you and the food isn't so great either.
far left people do not travel. It's the only conclusion i can draw from their incessant complaining about the US. They need to go live abroad for a few years. Even European countries are not like the United States of America. Everyone complaining needs to travel.
Yup. My family is from India. Not so comfy there is it? When all you can do is complain and self-hate for money/clout/clicks as much of the American left seems to do, it is in indicator that life has become too easy. To the snotty, incessantly self regarding left, I say get a job.
The far lefties that I know do travel, a lot. They just go to socialist countries in Europe or S. America and never really leave their echo chambers.
Unlike here....which is totally not an echo chamber.
I agree.
Totally agree. I've been to the third world, and third world authoritarian states at that. I know how nice we have it in the USA.
People just do not get this; i have to live abroad. It's the thinking that one misses the most. the American 'can do and will do' thinking. Also, the American identity. It's being handed away by people who are not smart enough to understand the value of this extraordinary identity. It is a civil war fought in the minds. The battle ground is the American mind and people overseas know this to be true.
Untrue. I am a socialist and lived in 4 different country's for many years even the US when Sept 11th happened. I was shocked at the patriotism and disgusting display of 'oh poor us!' What the US has perperated on the world in the name of Democracy is the EVIL.
Wait a few years before you find out what really happened.
I see you're one of the people who was saying "We deserved it" on 9/12. I was surrounded by them at the time.
While I agree that our government did outrageous things we should not have done during the Cold War, I don't think it would have been any better of an idea to simply sit back and allow Soviet-inspired authoritarians to do outrageous things all over the world instead. I'm sure you disagree, since those people are undoubtedly your heroes.
But you don't seem to realize that cheering on the deaths of thousands and thousands of innocent American civilians on a single day, as if it were a just recompense for the wrongs done by the CIA, really isn't a good look for you people. It's similar to what you probably did during Covid--wishing death on people who didn't want to take an experimental vaccine, wanting to lock them up for their refusal.
And I'm sure you're screaming, "But that's different!"
Celia, you cannot logic with a fanatic be it left or right.
People who say they are socialists are in their hearts communist. There is a very, very thin line between the two.
I wasn't trying to persuade this fanatic of anything--as you say, that's impossible. Indeed, I was merely describing the particular type of evil she revels in, as clearly and succinctly as possible. I didn't realize until 9/12 that there were so many people so openly enamored of it.
But you're a right-wing fanatic.
Please enlighten me.
What is communism?
What is socialism?
And another thing. Please be specific and point out examples of the US being evil.
"What the US has perperated sic on the world in the name of Democracy is the EVIL."
What is evil is your political philosophy which is responsible for the deaths of tens on millions of innocent people and these evil socialist dictators are still around, think China, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela.
Are these the socialist people you identify with?
You were shocked at the patriotism? What did you expect, that we would celebrate the massive deaths and destruction. Get a grip on yourself.
She and many like her celebrated those deaths. Of course she thought everyone should.
When it comes to murdering people, Lenin, Stalin and Mao make all other brutal dictators look like armatures and Hitler look like a girl scout selling cookies.
Hitler was a monster but these guys put him in the shade.
And this is the ideology you support? What does this make you?
Can you point out just one socialist country that is not run by a brutal dictator. Historians call Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao socialists. Lenin, Stalin and Mao murdered tens of millions of people.
France but that is Liberal socialism.
France is not a socialist country. It is a capitalistic country that has large social programs. The same goes for the Scandinavian countries. They are all capitalist countries with large social programs and tax the living daylights out of their citizens to sustain these programs.
It doesn't surprise me that a person who claims to be a socialist doesn't know squat about socialism or know what it is.
The people behind America’s global democracy agenda are utopian socialists, Jennifer, ya ding dong.
Compost has a sister.
Who would have thought?
Very good.
Sadly none of those countries disappeared you
To Jennifer I truly hope you don't live in America. 👎🏼👎🏼👎🏼
Actually, data shows that far more Democrats/liberals than Conservatives/GOP have passports.
Which is why GOP/Conservatives tend to thing all other countries besides the U.S. are shitholes, communists, don't have freedom, or cable, etc.
You don't have to go that far. You can start in Mexico
Agreed, prisons in the MENA area are HELL on Earth.
Lol....yep, if you step out of line in an American prison, you get the "time-out chair" and no more Wolfgang Puck meals for you.
This seems like a good time to share the joke from when my brother was in flight school and one of the female pilots destroyed one of the planes and we called it “Vaginaleven”.
😇😇😇
I don't agree with all your comments but that's kind of funny.
Seek professional help if you agree with more than 40% of my comments.
😂😂😂
I. Can’t. Even. 😂
Wow. I know you guys are young. And I know you're kinda in that Ivy League bubble with its warped lens of what is "insightful" or "profound", but really? Publishing this shallow, vacuous, pompous piece on 9-11? Do you somehow think this is "brave"?? There's no bravery here. It's way beyond tone deaf. I can't find the word for it.
I was at my trading desk in Chicago early that morning. I'll always remember the horror of that day. At first everyone thought a small plane had hit the first tower and we were comparing it to similar incident in Chicago years ago. Then......the second plane hit, and you knew what this was. The choking smoke; the flames; the people sticking their heads out broken windows gasping for air. Some deciding they'd had enough and jumping to deaths marked by pink spray as they hit the ground. They never found any bodies because as the towers fell, the people inside were in a meat grinder, being ground to bits too small to be found.
I'd used the term "mind-boggling" my entire life; but I told people I never knew what it truly meant until I saw the first tower fall. It was surreal. I was 1500 miles away and I wanted to get up and run somewhere.
I knew people in those towers. I'd been in one of the towers for conferences. And you guys somehow think it is cute to publish this insipid puerile piece today??? It almost seems cavalier. Classist, as in "the people who died there were less important than we who have these wonderful credentials.
Go talk to the survivors of the first responders of that day. The secretaries who died because they went to work that day. Tell them why you are so clever in choosing today to publish this sophomoric piece.
Shame on you. You're the same age as my daughters, so I get the immaturity. But, still, shame on you.
I knew a person who was there on that day and shared with me 3 things that people could not see or experience from watching the horrifying event on TV. These things were 1) the smell and odor in the air 2) screams of people as they jumped out the windows and 3) the feel of the soot on your skin.
Thank you for your account of your experience on that day, Tom Sparks; and to all who are taking the time to share comments in support of the heroes and victims that day. This is truly inspiring to know so many WILL remember with compassion and with a correct accounting of what’s really important about this history.
This right here is far better and more worthy of publishing than the Bin Laden associate fellatio we were all subjected to today by this article.
Couldn't agree more. God bless you brother
more and more I think about it, I think this could be the reason she ran the story. Simple immaturity and self-assumption.
Yeah. One thing I (tried) to take to heart decades ago was the old saying "Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to something else.". I'm a quasi-Ivy Leaguer myself (MIT, 1980) so I know these schools can pump you up on your own self-importance and intelligence. I was just lucky enough to go to the Chicago Board of Trade and have this arrogance beaten out of me by guys who'd barely graduated HS. Academic intelligence is an important part of the world. There are many other forms of intelligence too though, and they are just as important. Critical, actually. But, the insular view of academic credentialism has taken over.
Very well said Tom!
Yes well said! You're quite right about that
‘It’s way beyond tone deaf.’ Yes. I can think of a few words to describe it: decadent and elitist.
The decision to post this article on 9/11 came across to me thus.
Need to get an ex-combat vet on TFP staff. They’d might have pushed back on this.
WTF?? An article about those poor, suffering, oppressed TERRORISTS at GITMO on September 11th - of ALL DAYS(!??)
I'm sure the rally cry "Never Forget" meant something entirely different.
Remember how Obama fought to get those terrorists tried in NY to get them easier sentences and then closed the National Mall on Veterans Day and made a special exception to reopen it for an illegal immigrant parade?
Obama does not get enough credit for being a sack of shit who hates America.
I was a guard at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in 2007-2008. It was my first duty assignment after enlisting in the US Navy. I was trained to be an avionics technician, but they were desperate for anyone and promised lots of bonus pay and early promotions for volunteers to go to Gitmo.
I do not associate names with any prisoners because that information wasn’t really available to us, but Rabbani’s face looks familiar to me. He and the majority of the inmates (“detainees” as we were supposed to call them, which was reduced to “tainers” in camp slang) were quiet and compliant. A handful were actively belligerent toward the guards, including one elderly man who punched me in the face as I was releasing him from a chair used for intubated feeding. He was on hunger strike, so it was actually more of a love tap than a punch.
My year in Guantanamo was probably the hardest year of my life, and that was as a guard. I don’t know if anyone deserves to be there, even the hardened Jihadists. As an American I believe that all humans have a right to due process. But having seen the people there with my own eyes, and read some of the intelligence reports available on the camp network, I am fairly certain that many were wrongly imprisoned and that weighs heavily on me.
thank you very much. For both your service there and your frankness.
God bless you. And thank you very much for the insight.
Some of their guys were OBL associated and employees post 9/11. They knew EXACTLY what they were doing.
You’re right, and I hope that justice is served. But a large body of publicly available information has confirmed that many prisoners kept in Guantanamo for years were not guilty of any crime, and that’s a tragedy. Of course any system of justice is going to get it wrong sometimes, and the question we should ask is whether the error rate at Gitmo was worth it.
Read the article...they were determined to be releasable... no country (even their own) will take them. That is how big of Scumbags they are!
There may be a place and time for this story, but that time was not today, September 11.
Why are we romanticizing about Guantanamo and on 9/11 no less? These guys should have been tried already in a military court. Sentence them to life in prison or hung. They are all guilty by association. We are probably treating them better than they would be if they went back to their home country. The fact that their home country doesn't even want them should be evidence enough that they are dangerous men. I am insulted by this article on 9/11. Is nothing sacred, Bari?
“They are all guilty by association.”
Be careful what you wish for. By your definition, every MAGA who applauded January 6 could be thrown into Gitmo and tortured because they are "guilty by association" with the insurrectionists.
Why would you want that?
Jan 6th was planned by antifa and the left. Why would they put up fencing around the capitol? Why didn’t the armed guards stop them? It’s all a hoax. Everything that the right is accused of, is something the left doesn’t want you to know about. We can go back to Russian collusion if you want.
Is that you, Q? Nice to see you back on the socialz. How bout that pedo ring in the basement of the pizza place that had no basement? That was your best, dawg. Blaming J6 on lefties is even better, but is anyone stupid enough to believe it?
Keep on Qanon’n!
Again. For the umpteenth time. I am a genuine conservative. I live in a red state. I was born in the reddest state of all. I have to hold my nose and bite my tongue just to travel through a blue area (I don't go to Austin for anything but the airport and if I can get a reasonable flight out of San Antone I do) and I have NEVER heard anyone mention, refer to, or discuss Q or Q'Anon except liberals. What is up with that? Just another bogeyman to demonize differing POVs?
Bogeyman? No. QAnon was very real for a time, and spat its conspiracy bile through 4chan and other Internet sites.
Q peddled the dangerous lie that "Hillary runs a pedo ring from the basement of a pizza parlor in Ohio," which caused an otherwise normal American to grab up his rifle, drive to the parlor, and burst in looking for pedos. Fortunately, he came to his senses when he found out the parlor had no basement and there were no pedos to be found. He admitted after arrest he'd been conned by what he'd read on the Internet from QAnon.
QAnon has become far less of a thing than during the Trump years, but people still know the term. Therefore I use "Q" and "QAnon" as shorthand for "conspiracy kooks who see the evil hand of Hillary, Trump, antifa, Hunter Biden, BLM, MAGA, Black Helicopters, and FEMA Camps" in everydamnthing.
In this case, Scott claimed that "January 6 was planned by antifa and the left." That is so corrosively bullshit that it's fair to mock the statement as inspired by Q itself.
But that in no manner establishes that there is a real Q or Q-Anon. I have never been on 4Chan but understand it to be a hotbed of quackery. I have no trouble believing some progressive whackadoodle created this bogeyman to stir the pot. Which may or may not have worked. My theories credibility is enhanced by the fact that liberals are still fanning the flames. The only ones fanning the flames. The only place I have seen it recently is TFP - both articles and comments of avowed liberals. It is a fear-mongering tool. You are better than that.
You are too late. It has already happened.
What already happened?
Political prosecutions in this nation.
Actually, Scott, they couldn't prove that any of these men were guilty by association. They couldn't even prove that the man knew Bin Laden, let alone prove true the hearsay evidence that he was a bodyguard. That's the whole point man.
And this article didn't even mention the families, women and children, who were raped at black sites in Egypt and other countries that were hired by the CIA. It's been a while, but there was a man whose experiences were confirmed. He spoke to Congress. He was on the Rogan podcast. They had NO evidence on him at all. He saw women and children beaten and raped in front of their husbands and fathers.
Our anger could've been worse. But it was bad. And we learned little to nothing from these torture practices, which the CIA and NSA have themselves admitted.
I should say they couldn't prove that the men covered in the article, whose art we are talking about, were guilty of anything.
Two things I don’t believe:
-anything about Gitmo
-anything about Jan 6
I’ve got 22 years to save up for an Enrique Tarrio painting. Maybe he can paint a recreation of that BLM graffiti that he was arrested for vandalizing.
I was a guard at Gitmo in 2007-8. Ask me anything you want.
Do you think this story is valid?
What do you mean by “valid”? I agree with many commenters that the timing is controversial, but it seems like normal journalism otherwise. I am not qualified to judge the guilt or innocence of any individual, but I did observe the conditions of the prison and the faces of the prisoners myself.
I read and responded to your other comment where you provided your honest assessment. That is what I was interested in. I toyed with "merit", "justified", "right" etc. but none were exactly right so I went with valid and you provided what I wanted to know. Thank you again.
He said nothing.
He did.
As a guard, how much time did you spend reviewing SCI/SAP documents related to the justification for the detention of the prisoners?
Have you ever had someone put their underwear on your head and how would you rate this trauma from 1-10?
No SCI stuff, just whatever was available on the internal network which was probably TS. You could learn a lot more by reading the publicly available information on e.g. NYT’s Guantanamo Docket.
Never had underwear placed on my head, but I did get punched in the face by an elderly man on hunger strike. The more serious incidents generally involved excrement being thrown at guards. Prisoner #669, Ahmed Zaid Salim Zuhair, was notorious for this behavior.
today?? really? ? what were you thinking?