Congressmen Tim Ryan, a Democrat from Ohio's 17th Congressional District, has endorsed Chris Dodd for President. His announcement came on the Ed Schultz radio show. Rep. Ryan explained his endorsement:
"Chris Dodd has the clarity, conviction and record of action that I believe makes him the best choice to be the next President of the United States. His record in the Senate proves that when he sits in the White House, he will end the War in Iraq and the investments he makes in America will make our nation stronger and make Americans more competitive in the global economy."
Senator Dodd responded to Ryan's endorsement:
"I am pleased and honored to have Congressman Ryan's support. Tim's commitment to America's middle class and the people of Ohio is exemplary, and his energy and drive that have made him rise to prominence in such a short amount of time will be an incredible asset to my campaign. I am also deeply honored by this endorsement because Tim and I share a conclusion that the War in Iraq has made us less secure and a determination to do what needs to be done to change course.
"Ohio is a state crucial to a Democratic victory in 2008, and I'm honored that one of its Congressmen has decided to endorse my candidacy."
Rep. Ryan will be doing a liveblog at DailyKos later this afternoon.
Update:
Congressman Ryan's live blog at DailyKos is taking place now. In the post explaining his endorsement, Ryan writes:
When I vote for a President I WANT certain qualities. I want passion, I want conviction and I want Clarity. Today I endorse Chris Dodd because he has all three. You know, it would have been easy for me to endorse Senator Clinton, after all, a 33 point national lead is daunting. It would have been easy for me to endorse Senator Obama. He is an amazing candidate. But this isn't about poll numbers, and dare I say, this isn't about who can raise the most money. This is about who has the leadership to end the war in Iraq and take care of the mess that the Bush Administration has left us.
Lately, I have found myself unsatisfied with the stance that the top three contenders for President have taken on Iraq. While I believe wholeheartedly that all three mean very well and that we'd be MUCH better off with any one of them as President than anyone the Republicans put up I can't help but feel there is a lack of clarity in their plans for a timely and responsible troop withdrawal from Iraq. Telling me you are committed to a troop withdrawal and then not committing to have all our troops out of there by 2013 just isn't good enough for me. This is the biggest issue of our time, of my generation and its effects will be felt by our children and at $9 billion a month, our GRANDCHILDREN. I need to know that our next President is serious about ending this once and for all. We can't make any bold domestic advances without ending this war.
I read DailyKos, TPM, BuckeyeStateBlog and MyDD regularly, I know that you all feel the same way I do about this war but also about what we want for this country. It is time that we stop just electing the first person to reach some money threshold or pay too close attention to national level poll numbers that don't accurately reflect who is going to be voting in Iowa and New Hampshire. I AM ASKING YOU FOR YOUR HELP. THIS time, lets take a long hard look in the mirror BEFORE we have a nominee, not after. Lets be sure the person we put up against Giuliani, or Mitt, or Thompson or whomever the Republicans finally decide can not only win, but best represents our views. Lets not go through another presidential election where buyers remorse sets in. The stakes are too high. I am asking you to make this a competitive primary.
Chris Dodd is committed to withdrawing all our troops from Iraq. Watching him talk, watching him work, you feel that conviction that great leaders possess. He understands that SAYING you want to end the war and taking actions that prolong it do a tremendous disservice to the efforts of those who are doing everything they can to bring the war to a close. Dodd actually has a record of this in the past. In the 1980's Senator Dodd led the fight against President Reagan and his funding for Contras in Nicaragua. Most pundits said it would be impossible to stop Reagan, but Dodd did it.
Original article
rate
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 1
There are civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical, structural engineers, architects, materials scientists, NYC firefighters, current and former commercial airline pilots, fighter pilots, a military accident investigator, a Labor Department chief economist for George W. Bush, prosecutors, Justice Department officials, presidents and former ministers of foreign countries, diplomats, and a member of British parliament on this list.
These 500 or so folks, representative of positions across the broad spectrum of political thought in this country and the world, have all come to a single conclusion, in most cases independently of those who compiled the list. They are not "ravers," conspiracy theorists, irresponsible or illogical people. Some have asked to be added to the list in the past few weeks. But what they share in common are public statements that question the accuracy and thoroughness of the 9/11 Commission Report, the official account of the events of 9/11.
Major General Stubblebine said, for instance, "One of my experiences in the Army was being in charge of the Army's Imagery Interpretation for Scientific and Technical Intelligence during the Cold War. I measured pieces of Soviet equipment from photographs. It was my job. I look at the hole in the Pentagon and I look at the size of an airplane that was supposed to have hit the Pentagon. And I said, 'The plane does not fit in that hole'. So what did hit the Pentagon? What hit it? Where is it? What's going on?"
Capt. Russ Wittenberg, US Air Force (ret), former fighter pilot with over 100 combat missions, and 30,000+ commercial airline piloting hours under his belt has argued that, structurally, a 757, with amateur pilots, had absolutely no possibility to descend "7,000 feet in two minutes, all the while performing a steep 270 degree banked turn before crashing into the Pentagon's first floor wall..." "…pulling probably 5, 6, 7 G's. …the aircraft would literally fall out of the sky. I couldn't do it, and I'm positive they couldn't do it."
Judy Wood, BS CE (Structural), MS Eng Mechanics, PhD Materials Eng Science said, "…for the [WTC tower] to be collapsed in about 10 seconds, the lower floors would have to start moving before the upper floors could reach them by gravity alone. Did we see this? I believe it's pretty clear in some of the videos. The "wave" of collapse, progressing down the building, is moving faster than free-fall speed. This would require something like a detonation sequence... In conclusion, the explanations of the collapse that have been given by the 9/11 Commission Report and NIST are not physically possible. A new investigation is needed to determine the true cause of what happened to these buildings on September 11, 2001."
Capt Karin DeShore, NYFD, survivor, eyewitness stated: "Somewhere around the middle of the World Trade Center, there was this orange and red flash coming out. Initially it was just one flash. Then this flash just kept popping all the way around the building and that building had started to explode. The popping sound, and with each popping sound it was initially an orange and then a red flash came out of the building and then it would just go all around the building on both sides as far as I could see. These popping sounds and the explosions were getting bigger, going both up and down and then around the building."
Lou Cacchioli, a 20 year veteran of the NYFD witnessed multiple explosions on floors 60 levels below where the planes struck the towers. Cacchioli was called to testify privately. "…My story was never mentioned in the final report and I felt like I was being put on trial in a court room. I finally walked out. They were trying to twist my words and make the story fit only what they wanted to hear. All I wanted to do was tell the truth and when they wouldn't let me do that, I walked out." Many similar eyewitness accounts went unaccounted for in the conclusions of the Commission's report.)
Paul Craig Roberts, PhD, former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury under Reagan, and former editor of the Wall Street Journal said in 2006, "We know that it is strictly impossible for any building, much less steel columned buildings, to "pancake" at free fall speed. Therefore, it is a non-controversial fact that the official explanation of the collapse of the WTC buildings is false."
Some of the people quoted in this list, at www.patriotsquestion911.com, state explicitly that they don't know why the available evidence has been neglected, uninvestigated, or buried. Others are very clear about why.
Wayne Madsen, former US Naval Intelligence Officer, assigned to the NSA and State Department said in 2006, "After five years of talking to many individuals in the intelligence community, in the military, foreign intelligence agencies… people from the air traffic control community, the FAA, I came to the conclusion that after five years what we saw happen on that morning of September 11, 2001, was the result of a highly-compartmentalized covert operation to bring about a fascist coup in this country."
Robin Hordon, former commercial pilot, trainer, and FAA Air Traffic Controller in the Boston Control Center said, "I knew within hours of the attacks on 9/11/2001 that it was an inside job… There is absolutely no way that four large commercial airliners could have flown around off course for 30 to 60 minutes on 9/11 without being intercepted and shot completely out of the sky by our jet fighters unless very highly placed people in our government and our military wanted it to happen… It is important for people to understand that scrambling jet fighters to intercept aircraft showing the signs of experiencing "in-flight emergencies" such as going off course without authorization, losing a transponder signal and/or losing radio contact is a common and routine task executed jointly between the FAA and NORAD controllers… This type of "immediate, high speed, high priority and emergency" scramble had been happening regularly approximately 75 - 150 times per year for ten years."
Morgan Reynolds, PhD, Chief Economist US Labor Department under George W. Bush in 2006 said, "I first began to suspect that 9/11 was an inside job when the Bush-Cheney Administration invaded Iraq… We can prove that the government's story is false."
Suspend your disbelief briefly. An excellent place to start is right here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-275577066688213413
The official story as it stands has given rise to two deadly but very lucrative wars, the Patriot Act, torture as policy, the loss of habeas corpus, nearly 4000 service people's deaths, an estimated one million civilian deaths in Iraq. The Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip D. Zelikow, directed the course of the investigation with a staff of eighty. He is also credited with writing the administration's policy position regarding pre-emptive war. The conclusions -- and omissions, such as the many firefighter's eyewitness testimonies of explosions -- in the 9/11 Commission report reflects that position.
All of this suggests an explanation of events very different than what we have been given to believe.
Addendum
In writing about the 9/11 attacks as "an inside job," I realize that a story that has reached mythic proportions is being challenged, Al Qeada terrorists solely behind the events. But consider: if it was an "inside job," it is a criminal conspiracy of the highest order. It goes way beyond partisan politics, or the ideological differences between conservatives of the Russell Kirk variety and progressive liberals. If it was "a highly compartmentalized covert operation," it would be as serious an affront to our collective national wellbeing as the rise of nationalist socialism was to Germany in the early 1930's.
The precedent for false-flag operations are acknowledged by conservatives and progressives alike: In the Gulf of Tonkin incident President Johnson created a false crisis which escalated the Vietnam War; the destruction of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor, and the yellow journalism that followed, whipped up public sentiment against Spain and precipitated the Spanish-American War; Operation Northwoods was concocted in the Joint Chiefs of Staff and presented to the Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962. It included plans to blow up a US warship in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and blame the incident on Cuba, thereby fomenting hostilities against the Castro regime. Attacks on targets in Miami and Washington were contemplated in this document: "We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington. The terror campaign could be pointed at refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute [sic] to Florida (real or simulated). We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized. Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement, also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government." Precedents for an "inside job" exist.
WTC7, which collapsed at 5:20 on 9/11, contained the offices of CIA, Secret Service, Department of Defense, the SEC, the IRS, as well as Rudy Guiliani's Mayor's Office of Emergency Management. This building was neither hit by planes, nor heavily damaged by debris from the Twin Towers' collapse. Collapsing straight down into its own footprint, Dutch demolition's expert Danny Jowenko, who knew nothing about WTC7, viewed the collapse and said without reservation that this was an expertly done controlled demolition. If these offices held the evidence for an elaborate plan, it was most certainly totally destroyed in that collapse. Sound far-fetched? Wirt Walker III, the president's cousin, was CEO of Securacom/Stratesec, 1999-2002, the company providing security for the WTC. Marvin Bush, George's brother, was a principal in the company from 1998-2000.
Also note that Larry Silverstein, owner of the building complex, had purchased leasing rights to the buildings in Feb 2001. With these buildings under orders to remove the asbestos coating the structural steel, and steadily losing tenants due to their expensive, poorly ventilated and serviced office space, in the months before the attacks, Silverstein insured these white elephants for billions of dollars, with a "destruction by terrorism" clause included. His group fought for not one, but two insurance settlements worth $7.1 billion. Putting up $14 million of his own money, he bought into a $3.2 billion leasing contract six weeks before 9/11. His return on investment from their destruction, so far, has been $2 billion. There was opportunity, motive and means for "an inside job."
This is a subject worthy of the full attention of a robust, independent, impartial criminal investigation. Neither the $6 million 9/11 Commission investigation, nor the $16 million NIST investigation was impartial or independent. (By way of comparison, the Clinton/Lewinski investigation cost over $40 million.) The 9/11 Commission report omitted: 118 firefighter's eyewitness accounts of explosions throughout the buildings before the collapse, seismic data of massive explosions before the planes even hit the buildings, key evidence, such as Sec. Of Transportation Norman Mineta's testimony concerning Cheney's whereabouts and orders in the crucial first hour of the attack, the collapse of WTC7, the pools of molten metal that persisted for 3 months under the rubble (evidence of massive explosions), the suppressed video from cameras around the Pentagon showing what actually hit the building. This investigation was not robust, independent or impartial. It set about to prove that 19 amateurs evaded the most sophisticated radar system and fortifications on the planet to conduct an attack, ignoring all evidence to the contrary and especially that which implicates both high-level officials and the military.
Don't we deserve better? Don't the families of the 2974 innocent victims deserve better? Don't the 4000 service people killed in Iraq deserve better? Or, the estimated 1 million civilians that have died in Iraq as a consequence of our "war on terror?"