Talk:September 11 attacks/Archive 12

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Terrorist

Arguing over terms is the best way to bury and lose facts. HUGE NUMBERS of wikipedia discussion pages are trash-talk and term argument, especially anywhere that "terrorist" is used. Stick to the dictionary. It's the only way to ensure a true null point of view. Terrorist: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=terrorist Terrorism: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=terrorism ... This simple policy KILLS this discussion entirely. The remainder of your argument is deciding whether or not the attacks had a goal or not, because they were certainly "calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians". "in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature"? ... that essentially means that any act of violence against civilians (wherein civilians are not simply collateral damage, but their buildings/homes/businesses the target) that has an aim... is terrorism. Changing titles to more obscure things that will cause them to be filtered out of a search for "terrorist attacks" is bad authoring.

All you little "freedom fighter" supporting types need to learn that fighting for freedom is done properly by attacking the ESTABLISHMENT of power that is in conflict with your FREEDOM. America causes civilian casualties in Iraq with quite some frequency. However, America is NOT TERRORIST because we do not TARGET CIVILIANS. Aiming a plane full of civilians at a building full of civilians in the middle of a city full of millions of civilians for the purpose of attacking an enemy for supporting Israel sounds like an ideological driven act of violence to me. There should be no truces or compromises in calling things what they are as defined in the dictionary, sensationalist or not. If you let people, they will argue that black is not a color, that trees falling in forests don't make sounds, and various other retarded crap. This all just gets in the way of disseminating facts and it needs to be STOPPED. There are better places than an encyclopedia for this kind of trashy, worthless discussion.

That discussion is currently dead. Calling human-caused attacks terrorism is fairly redundant, even if the term wasn't POV; redundancy is not a synonym of concision. Further, a discussion hardly overrules a policy: an example on the NPOV page. — Olathe 20:55, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

(moved from below) I agree with what Rebroad said about removing the word entirely. Simply describing the acts is enough. Those who already believe it is terrorist will find nothing to argue with. Those who already believe it is freedom fighting will find nothing to argue with. Calling it either or both is POV, as evidenced by the lovely, time-wasting debates about it (you can hardly say that either side is trolling). Let's leave the characterization of actions to the readers. The article will lose nothing important for it. — Olathe 20:30, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

Notice from the person that probably caused all of this. A few days ago (July 7 2005 maybe?) I replaced the words "Islamist" with "CIA" in describing the persons involved in the attack. The "controversy" seems to have erupted since then regarding the definition of terrorist.

Certainly there can be no question that the attacks were a terrorist attack. But the evidence that it had anything to do with the religion of Islam is utterly absurd. Bin Laden was a CIA operative when Al-Qaeda was set up, and evidence suggests that the relationship still exists. If Al-Qaeda committed the attacks, they would be the best friends the Bush regime ever had, having given the regime the public support needed to bomb Afghanistan and invade Iraq. The administration's old business buddies made out quite well building an oil pipeline through Afghanistan and giving Halliburton and the arms industry billions in development deals. The White House's cozy relationship with the Bin Laden family, exposed in detail in Fahrenheit 911, seems to reinforce this.

Neverminding the questionable evidence of a 757 crash at the Pentagon or the definition of "terrorism," I was simply removing the false assumption that an entire world religion should be slandered on the basis of a world event that the Bush administration seemed ready and waiting for. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.215.217.104 (talk • contribs) 23:58, 10 July 2005

"==Muslim Celebrations== Muslims throughout the world celebrated the attacks. Most famously, people in Gaza and the West Bank danced and fired guns in the streets. " can anyone claim this didnt happen?

Yes. Kingturtle 22:51, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes. 'throughout the world' is an untrue description of what amounts to a disputed video recording of, at most, ten or twelve people (most of whom were children). illWill 22:30, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

Discussion of interpretation of the politics of the people behind the attacks belongs in a section below, since much of this is tied up with POV and conspiracy theories.

On many occasions, President Bush has emphasized that Islam was not responsible for the attacks on USA, and the US war is not with Islam, rather, the enemy is an extreme viewpoint not representative of the Muslim religion. To say otherwise is to deny what the Bush administration has repeatedly emphasized.

The movie Fahrenheit 911 was a failed propaganda effort designed to defeat President Bush in an election campaign. Repeating any assertions from that source need some corroboeration.

Phraseology of next two sentences deliberately similar to make the point that yesterday's friend is tomorrow's enemy & vica versa in the world of international politics that have got so bad that there is a war.

In Iraq today, much of the resistance to the USA coalition (but not all of it) comes from foreign fighters from outside of Iraq, who feel a duty to oppose what they think the USA and its coalition stands for there.

In Afghanistan several years ago, when the former Soviet Union invaded, much of the resistance to the Russians (but not all of it) came from foreign fighters from outside of Afghanistan, who felt a duty to oppose what they believed the USSR's goals were there.

bin Laden was a leader of a major faction of those foreign fighters, and received aid from the CIA because during the Cold War the USA and USSR were engaged in a struggle that to those nations, was more important than the various nations they were struggling in. Once the USSR withdrew from Afghanistan, motivation for the CIA to support the rebels in Afghanistan against a foe that was no longer there, evaporated.

AlMac|^(talk) 02:00, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Economic Recovery

Anyone else pissed that Bloomberg Actually has the balls to use his so called downtown recovery, as a reason to re-elect him, If I see another 90 second TV spot for Bloomerg I'm going to run against that crook,

If the economy is recovering, and if he's doing so much then why are the blocks and blocks boarded up businesses, creeping further and further uptown, there are midtown neighborhoods for gods sake, that are starting to go under under his 'leadership' He hasn't done a single thing for this city except keep the poverty south of his townhouse.. He's a very slight improvment over Rudy(the little nazi) and any body who votes either of them into any political office deserves to have their citezenship revoked.. and, so it's not off topic, someone please tell me how someone can be the 'hero of 911' if he was elected months after 911?

Motive

I've changed the motive section to try and be more accurate and comprehensive; feel free to alter it, but I wanted to make sure that the following problems with the previous version were addressed: (1) the article gave Al Qaeda's beef with Israel a prominence disproportionate to that in the source it cited, yet (2) gave no mention of Al Qaeda's opposition to US economic policy in the Middle East or (3) allegations that the US oppresses the people of the Middle East - both of which are extremely important motivating factors. (4) It did not mention the White House's explanation of the motivation for 9/11, which is by far the most widely held in the media. (5) It was kinda repetitive. (6) Although I believe Al Qaeda was, obviously, responsible for 9/11, the article was a bit off-handed to people who think otherwise, and didn't mention the motivations attributed to the alternative perpetrators, which the motive section ought to do. I thought it was also important to point out that Islam was a motivation, but tried to temper that by suggesting Al Qaeda has a distinct interpretation of the religion.

Fourth flight's target

I read the sentence "Captured al-Qaeda mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is rumored to have said that Flight 93 was definitely targeting the Capitol" as being POV and almost as if it were trying to be dramatic (how can a rumour be definite?).

I have changed this to "Captured al-Qaeda mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is rumored to have said that Flight 93's target was the Capitol" to (hopefully) get a more NPOV.

There's no contradiction between "rumoured" and "definitely". Think about it, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is rumoured to have said (something like) "Flight 93's target was definitely the Capitiol". Cadr 18:19, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Muslims and 9/11

Osama bin Laden's second interview and denial of commiting the attacks should be mentioned. Otherwise this article will be completetly biased against Muslims. Also it should be stated that the Israel-Palestine Two-state solution was to be made public the day after the attacks and cannot be looked at as just coincidental [1]. "Is a predominantly Christian country and therefore is heretical and islamophobic" is not in the quoted article [2] so I have removed it.

Request for Comment:Links section (kinda sucks)

Current

Here's the current layout of all the see also / links section:

• Media
• See also

• Victims

• References
• External links
• Video
• Photos
• Books
• Victims and damage
• Further reading

Proposal

In a word: bleh. Here's my proposal:

• Further information

• Media

• Audio
• Video
• Photos

• Further reading

• Books
• Internal links
• External links

• References
• Two-state solution

("victims and damage" and "victims" can be merged into one of these categories)