Whopper of the Week: Robert Mueller

"There were no warning signs that I'm aware of that would indicate this type of operation in the country."

—FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, at a Sept. 17 Justice Department news briefing about the Sept. 11 attacks.

but

Mueller's agency, which has principal responsibility for preventing acts of terrorism on U.S. soil, knew that al-Qaida was planning a big attack; that there was some evidence Middle Eastern terrorists were infiltrating U.S. flight schools; that Zacarias Moussaoui, then attending flight school in Minnesota, had been arrested on immigration charges and was suspected of being a terrorist; and that President Bush had been warned of an al-Qaida plot to hijack airlines. The fact that Mueller later lied about receiving all these clues is mere icing on the cake.

I couldn't find the author of this sage piece of wisdom, but I let it guide much of my worldview: "Never ascribe to conspiracy that which can easily be explained by incompetence."

In his defense, Mueller was nominated on July 5th and confirmed as FBI director on August 2nd, 2001.

Thanks Sondra for the link.

4:48:29 PM  comment []    

Osama bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth

The story begins in 1998, with an American petroleum corporation called Unocal. Unocal was heavily invested in a planned pipeline that would run from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, and out to a warm water port. From there, natural gas piped down from the Caspian Sea would be made available for sale to American and Asian markets. The deal required approval from the governments of all three nations, including the Taliban. If terms could be met, Unocal and its investors stood to reap enormous profits.

The deal was destroyed along with two American embassies in Africa, victims of terror attacks by Osama bin Laden. Because bin Laden was based in Afghanistan and supported by the Taliban, the Clinton administration forbade any American company from dealing with them. A blizzard of cruise missiles soon followed this order, and Unocal was forced to wait for calmer days before it could continue to pursue the pipeline deal. Without Afghanistan, the puzzle piece at the center of the arrangement, everything crashed to a halt.

OK, this is believable enough. The pipeline stuff is well-documented, Afghanistan is important, and we were paying off the Taliban, ostensibly to cut back on opium production.

Pakistani news agencies reported in the weeks before September 11th that America had threatened war against the Taliban if they did not agree to the pipeline deal. "Accept our carpet of gold," the Bush administration is reported to have said, "or be buried under a carpet of bombs."

How poetic.

The implications of all this are profoundly disturbing. If Brisard and Dasique are to be believed, the Bush administration was actively courting the Taliban, protectors of Osama bin Laden, on behalf of Unocal. That courtship gave way to dire threats of war, believable enough that the September 11th attack could well be seen as a pre-emptive strike by bin Laden and the Taliban.

And here's the leap. The attacks were a pre-emptive strike? In retaliation for the pressure the administration put on them to do a pipeline deal? Please.

Folks, this is a war of civilizations. Except for the Gulf War, the US has flinched back every time OBL hit us. I think they seriously thought that they'd get away with the WTC and Pentagon attacks without retribution. And hell, with the world press as anti-US as it is, did they really think that we could get away with any significant attack on Afghanistan without a provocation? They took our money to eradicate opium because that corresponded with their own views on drugs. They thought they could get away with anything. They didn't care about world public opinion when they destroyed the buddha statues. They knew we wouldn't do anything. They were right.

Now perhaps what we have here is a failure to communicate. Saddam thought we gave him to OK to traipse into Kuwait. Osama noticed a pattern where every time we hit him, we would run away and lob cruise missles at him -- from a safe distance. Like a toddler, he decided to push the limits a little further. And this time he stepped over the line. And he's probably dead now because of it.

Yes, the US government and the Bush administration are unduely influenced by big business and big oil in particular. But that doesn't mean that there's some grand conspiracy going on.   

3:20:45 PM  comment []    

At MIT, they can put words in our mouths

In one demonstration, the researchers taped a woman speaking into a camera, and then reprocessed the footage into a new video that showed her speaking entirely new sentences, and even mouthing words to a song in Japanese, a language she does not speak. The results were enough to fool viewers consistently, the researchers report.

I guess this means that the bin Laden tapes and the videos of the 9/11 celebrations in the Palestinian territories were faked.

via [H]

12:24:20 PM  comment []    

This is cool

Cool Chips will enable many new and improved consumer products. They will enable laptops to run cooler, for example, and make possible in-car soda and grocery coolers. A panel of Cool Chips one inch square will provide enough cooling for a refrigerator; a panel about two inches square will have the capacity to provide the air conditioning for a living room; and a panel about five inches square will supply enough cooling power to cool an entire house.

Most existing cooling systems use compressors and environment-damaging fluids and are 40-50% efficient. Smaller thermoelectric cooling devices, despite more than $1 billion spent on research, are only 8% efficient. Cool Chips are projected to operate at 70-80% of the maximum theoretical efficiency (Carnot) for cooling.

Apparently Boeing has tested and is interested in this technology. And guess what, the technology works in reverse as well: rather than applying electricity and creating cold and hot surfaces, they can take heat and use it to generate electricity. I could learn to like this. This begs the question: can they do it cheaply?

via [H]

12:20:06 PM  comment []