Quote Originally Posted by helge View Post
Quote Originally Posted by sabang
That one. Check out the Options trading in the couple of days prior to 911, and the non-attempts to divulge identities subsequently. Some convenient insurance transactions too, but much weaker evidence.
Care to comment, Daffy ?
Did some people know about this impending attack, and possibly speculated financially on the outcome?

Of course - at the very least, those who organized, and planned the operation, would have had access to the information, timetables, and funds to speculatively invest, or short, relevant businesses. It's what I would have done, and it would have been a win/win situation.

In case of failure, you'd sell the investments within 48 hours, and no one would be the wiser, and you most likely lost nothing on the value. In case of success of the mission, you stand to profit significantly, and by the time you sold your positions, and erased your steps, it would be difficult to trace you (this assumes sufficient planning in advance, which the perpetrators obviously would have been able to do).

Thus, the fact that such transactions were noted means relatively little, except that it was a planned mission - it does not place into question the existence of the hijackers, the planes, the passengers, the crew, and the events.

I would like to take this moment, though, to express a certain admiration for the planners and organizers of these attacks -- disregarding the outcome having gone beyond their own expectations, it takes literally a mastermind to take 20 goat herders (mentally speaking) from a stock of uneducated, ill-tempered, peasants, and train them sufficiently so as to make it possible to pull off this kind of operation. This isn't to say that I admire THEM, or think what they did to be good (it was a despicable, terrible act), but being able to pull off such an operation, while essentially being handed retards as your foot soldiers is quite impressive.

Granted, that's more or less what the US uses as foot soldiers and cannon fodder as well (*cough* Abu Ghraib *cough*), so a comparison might be apt, but we generally use slightly more intelligent and educated stock for special missions in enemy territory. They can't.

Of course, it's also telling that they haven't managed much of anything since then...