KGB Report by Kevin G. Barkes

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(July 2000 and earlier)

Saturday, September 16, 2006
posted by KGB at 12:02 PM (permalink)

Quote of the day

Congress is funding a 700 mile fence to protect our 2,000 mile border with Mexico... next up, we're funding a trip half-way to the moon.
-Jay Leno

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posted by KGB at 8:20 AM (permalink)

Political quotes of the week

In his speech to the nation this week, Bush said that we have to fight against people who reject tolerance and despise dissent, and anyone who disagrees with that is a traitor.
Jay Leno

You are joining us on September 12th, which as you know, is the fifth anniversary of the misappropriation of the events of September 11th.
Jon Stewart

It's been reported that Condoleezza Rice is dating a high-level Canadian diplomat. Sources say you can tell because Rice has an extra bounce in her step and is giggling a lot as she prepares for the invasion of Iran.
Conan O'Brien

The Senate Intelligence Committee- that almost sounds like an oxymoron- released a report this week saying there's no evidence that Saddam Hussein had a relationship with al Qaeda. Thank God we found that out before we did something crazy.
Jay Leno

The latest polls came out and President Bush's approval ratings have dropped another 3%. In fact, he's so unpopular that the Democrats are going to have to work really, really hard to screw up this election.
Jay Leno

Today is a very solemn day- the fifth anniversary of 9/11. It's a time for the nation to reflect, come together and watch TV. What better way to commemorate a national tragedy than turning it into a mini-series?
Stephen Colbert

(On ABC's Path to 9/11): The original title was 'Sheiks on a Plane.' This is controversial because apparently, it's very heavily slanted and it blames 9/11 on Bill Clinton. It makes Bush out to be a saint, which is kind of ridiculous because if Bush is gonna be on any ABC program, it should be Lost.
Bill Maher

The new Senate report that came out today said there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda before we invaded Iraq. Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said this is just another partisan attempt to denegrate what administration officials worked so hard to pull out of their asses.
Bill Maher

(from Daniel Kurtzman on about.com)

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Friday, September 15, 2006
posted by KGB at 7:22 AM (permalink)

I despise lazy journalists

[Somebody at the Associated Press should get disciplined for this atrocity:]

CANTON, Ohio (AP)- A widow rented a rotary dial telephone for 42 years, paying what her family calculates as more than $14,000 for a now outdated phone. [Was this number independently confirmed? This works out to about $27 a month. My original phone service, including a leased Western Electric phone, cost about $7 a month in 1973.]

Ester Strogen, 82, of Canton, first leased two black rotary phones- the kind whose round dial is moved manually with your finger- in the 1960s. Back then, the technology was new and owning telephones was unaffordable for most people. [Ok. This story is pure B.S. Rotary phone technology was new?? The rotary phone was invented in 1888, numbnuts. It went into wide use in 1919. Touchtone phones were invented in the 1960s, and the service was officially introduced in 1963, in Greensburg and Carnegie, PA. (More info here)].

Until two months ago, Strogen was still paying AT&T to use the phones - $29.10 a month. Strogen's granddaughters, Melissa Howell and Barb Gordon, ended the arrangement when they discovered the bills. [Aha.. so they arrived at the $14,000 figure by taking the current bill and multiplying it by 40 years. Yeah, that sounds good. That way we can get some moron reporter to write one of those "little people ripped off by unfeeling large company" stories. No one is anal enough to actually do the math, right?]

"I'm outraged," Gordon said. "It made me so mad. It's ridiculous. If my own grandmother was doing it, how many other people are?" [It's been 40 years, Skippy, and you just noticed Grandma is using technology from the Eisenhower administration? Just how self-absorbed are you, you twit? Have you ever visited her before, or were you just stopping by to do a quick calculation on the potential value of her estate?]

New Jersey-based Lucent Technologies, a spinoff of AT&T that manages the residential leasing service, said customers were given the choice option to opt out of renting in 1985. The number of customers leasing phones dropped from 40 million nationwide to about 750,000 today, he said. [Back when it became legal to connect non-Western Electric phones to the Bell system, lots of people opted to remain with the old units. The fact Grandma's phones are still working should show you that they really don't make them like that any more.]

"We will continue to lease sets as long as there is a demand for them," Skalko said. [The phone company is not your mommy.]

Benefits of leasing include free replacements and the option of switching to newer models, he said. [Assuming our customers can read, of course.]

Gordon said she believes the majority of people leasing are elderly and may not realize they are paying thousands of dollars for a telephone. [They're not paying thousands of dollars. They're paying $29.10 a month for several phones. How many is unclear, since this story is so badly researched. My guess is she's paying about five bucks a month per phone.]

Skalko said bills are clearly marked, and customers can quit their lease any time by returning their phones.

Strogen says she's not a big fan of her new push-button phone.

"I'd like to have my rotary back," she said. "I like that better."

If you're going to do a hatchet job on the phone companies, at least do it properly: kgbreport.com/: //www.post-gazette.com/pg/04229/362300.stm.

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Thursday, September 14, 2006
posted by KGB at 7:07 AM (permalink)

It's National Cream-Filled Doughnut Day

Just thought you should know.

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posted by KGB at 12:49 AM (permalink)

Happy Birthday, Dear Hard Drive....

The 50th anniversary of shipment of the first hard drive [occurred] Wednesday, September 13, 2006.

The original hard disk drive (IBM 305 RAMAC) in 1956 stored only 5MB of data on fifty 24-inch disks and weighed over 250 kg (over 550 pounds). About the size of two large refrigerators and as tall as a man, you could lease the whole unit for about $250,000/year in today's dollars and not quite store two mp3 copies of Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog".

RAMAC = Random Access Memory Accounting System

(via Dave Farber's Interesting Persons mailing list)

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Wednesday, September 13, 2006
posted by KGB at 1:38 PM (permalink)

Mashed potatoes, gravy, and cranberry sauce! Woooo!

"Say what you will about his Presidency, but after that speech, it is 15 minutes shorter."
-Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

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posted by KGB at 12:27 PM (permalink)

Computer-based voting: what could go wronaaarrrggghh!

What's the matter with paper and pencil? At this point, black and white rocks and a canvas sack would appear to be more reliable.

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posted by KGB at 12:17 PM (permalink)

Let's test our weapons over here, on our own citizens, so we don't accidentally hurt anyone over there. Wanna run that past me again?

Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday. The object is basically public relations. Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions from others about possible safety considerations, said Secretary Michael Wynne.

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posted by KGB at 11:58 AM (permalink)

Headline you don't like to see

Google, Microsoft vie for Earth domination

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posted by KGB at 7:36 AM (permalink)

Happy belated birthday

To H.L Mencken, the cynic's cynic:

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

A gentleman is one who never strikes a woman without provocation.

A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century.

An altruist is one who would be sincerely sorry to see his neighbor's children devoured by wolves.

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

As an American, I naturally spend most of my time laughing.

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.

Change is not progress.

College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity.

Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us someone may be looking.

Deep within the heart of every evangelist lies the wreck of a car salesman.

Demagogue: One who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

During many a single week, I daresay, more money is spent in New York upon useless and evil things than would suffice to run the kingdom of Denmark for a year.

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

Government in America has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men. (1926)

Government, today, is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world; there are only subjects. They work day in and day out for their masters; they are bound to die for their masters at call. Out of this working and dying they tend to get less and less.

Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one at least is disposed of.

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

I believe that it should be perfectly lawful to print even things that outrage the pruderies and prejudices of the general, so long as any honest minority, however small, wants to read them. The remedy of the majority is not prohibition, but avoidance.

I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

Immorality: The morality of those who are having a better time.

In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later. For another thing, they die earlier.

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure."

Most people want security in this world, not liberty.

Nature abhors a moron.

No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.

No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.

No matter how much a woman loved a man, it would still give her a glow to see him commit suicide for her.

No one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. Whenever the secular arm is called in to sustain an idea, whether new or old, it is always a bad idea, and not infrequently it is downright idiotic.

No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people.

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.

Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

Temptation is a woman's weapon and a man's excuse.

The American people, taking one with another, constitute the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goose steppers ever gathered under on flag in Christendom since the end of the Middle Ages.

The best years are the forties; after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy.

The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act; even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist "Jack".

The formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists.

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.

The older I get, the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology.

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule-and both commonly succeed, and are right.

When the water reaches the upper decks, follow the rats.

Whenever a reporter is assigned to cover a Methodist conference, he comes home an atheist.

Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sure sign he expects to be paid for it.

Women don't like timid men. Cats do not like prudent mice.

If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.

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Tuesday, September 12, 2006
posted by KGB at 9:21 AM (permalink)

Deja vu all over again

Record transit fare hikes loom if state fails to hike aid

Every year it's the same thing. Why don't the cretinous oafs in Harrisburg just permanently fund public transportation and be done with it?

It never ceases to amaze me that the people who have to ride public transportation to get to their minimum-wage service jobs downtown, where they pass parking meters that earn more per hour than they do, don't just rise in revolt.

Perhaps it's the need to earn a living and provide for their families, and their sense of responsibility.

Responsibility. I guess it's that foreign concept that confuses the Legislature.

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posted by KGB at 9:00 AM (permalink)

Quote of the Day

Elsewhere, one day after Brad Pitt said he would not marry Angelina Jolie until gay people are allowed to marry, millions of American men gave their girlfriends the same excuse.
-The Borowitz Report

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posted by KGB at 7:38 AM (permalink)

Two things you never thought you'd hear uttered in the same sentence...

Wouldn't it be delicious if the female orgasm were the thing that tips the scales in favor of the Intelligent Design crowd? It would make for a great closing argument: "The female orgasm is so complex and strange, it could only have come from God. The reason there is no evolutionary purpose to it is because there is no evolution! God is in the details... and the bedroom. Who needs Darwin when you have the Bible- and the Jack Rabbit. Case closed. Amen."
-Arianna Huffington (click here for the whole story)

(And I always thought the reference to a "religious experience" was simply metaphorical.)

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Monday, September 11, 2006
posted by KGB at 4:33 PM (permalink)

Sigh. Just another day at kgb.com...

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hello
Hello thanks for your service in kgb.com what i want is just tell me how to be aknowledge about the ancient relationship between mustafa barzani and russia please imean the past relation 1970s and on.
ahmad

---------------

My dearest Skippy,

Wrong KGB, Einstein.

Regards,

KGB

-----
Kevin G. Barkes

(And thanks to the rest of you for the birthday greetings.)

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posted by KGB at 9:07 AM (permalink)

Factual Inaccuracies in "The Path to 9/11"

(From Defective Yeti, via The Sanity Inspector on the alt.quotations Usenet newsgroup.)

I was among the rabid right-wing bloggers fortunate enough to receive an advance copy of the ABC / Disney miniseries The Path To 9/11. While I applauded the filmmakers for bringing to light some hard truths regarding the attacks (where "hard" is defined as "un-"), I feel obligated to point out a few minor errors and inconsistencies:

The Starr Report alleged that President Bill Clinton engaged in oral sex with Monica Lewinsky, not Zacarias Moussaoui (though it's easy to see how the two names could get mixed up).

Evidence that the Taliban was founded by Tipper Gore is circumstantial at best.

There is no record of Madeleine Albright describing the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole as "more of a prank, really" and dismissing it as "no big deal."

Michael Moore spent most of 2001 working on his film Bowling For Columbine, so it's unlikely he could have found time to give the 9/11 hijackers flying lessons.

The scene in which Howard Dean punches Jesus is a dramatization.

The cockpit recordings from United Airlines Flight 175 have never been released, so there's no verification that that the last voice heard is a terrorist saying "this message brought to you by moveon.org."

Blooper! When the Clintons are in bed and Bill is reading to Hillary "to get her in the mood" he is holding Mein Kampf upside-down.

The 9/11 Commission did not conclude that citizens could guard against future attacks by purchasing Lilo & Stitch DVDs.

Sandy Berger and Osama bin Laden were not the co-stars of the 1983 hit comedy "Bosom Buddies," so it's unclear how they could have "forged a strong and lifelong friendship" while serving as such.

The finale, in which Bush crashes Air Force One into a remote Afghan stronghold, emerges unscathed from the wreckage, and defeats Al Qaeda using nunchucks and pyrokinesis, is actually a composite of several different events.

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posted by KGB at 7:09 AM (permalink)

A birthday custom

I make it a point to listen to this song every year on my birthday. And every year it seems to be an eerily accurate assessment of things that are happening in my life.

Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a tender and callow fellow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.

Try to remember when life was so tender
That no one wept except the willow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That dreams were kept beside your pillow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That love was an ember about to billow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.

Deep in December, it's nice to remember,
Although you know the snow will follow.
Deep in December, it's nice to remember,
Without a hurt the heart is hollow.
Deep in December, it's nice to remember,
The fire of September that made us mellow.
Deep in December, our hearts should remember
And follow.

"Try To Remember"
The Fantasticks
Music: Harvey Schmidt
Lyrics: Tom Jones

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Sunday, September 10, 2006
posted by KGB at 10:36 AM (permalink)

re: "The Path to 9/11":

Under the watch of George W. Bush:

February 7, 2001: CIA Director Tenet warned Congress in open testimony that "the threat from terrorism is real, it is immediate, and it is evolving." He said bin Laden and his global network remained "the most immediate and serious threat" to US interests. "Since 1998 bin Laden has declared that all US citizens are legitimate targets," he said, adding that bin Laden "is capable of planning multiple attacks with little or no warning." [Associated Press, 2/7/01; Sunday Herald, 9/23/01]

In June of 2001, German intelligence warned the CIA, Britain's intelligence agency, and Israel's Mossad that Middle Eastern terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and use them as weapons to attack "American and Israeli symbols which stand out." A later article quoted unnamed German intelligence sources, stating that the information was coming from Echelon surveillance technology, and that British intelligence had access to the same warnings. However, there were other informational sources, including specific information and hints given to, but not reported by, Western and Near Eastern news media six months before 9/11. [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 9/11/01; Washington Post, 9/14/01; Fox News, 5/17/02]

June 28, 2001: George Tenet wrote an intelligence summary to Condeleezza Rice stating: "It is highly likely that a significant al-Qaeda attack is in the near future, within several weeks" [Washington Post, 2/17/02]. This warning was shared with "senior Bush administration officials" in early July. [9/11 Congressional Inquiry, 9/18/02]

July 5, 2001: Richard Clark gave a direct warning to the FAA, to increase their security measures. The FAA refused to take such action. [New Yorker, 1/14/02; www.cooperativeresearch.org].

June-July 2001: President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and national security aides were given briefs with headlines such as "Bin Laden Threats Are Real" and "Bin Laden Planning High Profile Attacks." The exact contents of these briefings remain classified, but according to the 9/11 Commission, they consistently predicted upcoming attacks that would occur "on a catastrophic level, indicating that they would cause the world to be in turmoil, consisting of possible multiple-but not necessarily simultaneous-attacks." CIA Director Tenet later recalled that by late July, he felt that President Bush and other officials grasped the urgency of what they were being told. [9/11 Commission Report, 4/13/04 (B)] But Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin, later stated that he felt a great tension, peaking within these months, between the Bush administration's apparent misunderstanding of terrorism issues and his sense of great urgency. McLaughlin and others were frustrated when inexperienced Bush officials questioned the validity of certain intelligence findings. Two unnamed, veteran Counter Terrorism Center officers deeply involved in bin Laden issues, were so worried about an impending disaster, that they considered resigning and going public with their concerns. [9/11 Commission Report, 3/24/04 (C)] Dale Watson, head of counter terrorism at the FBI, wished he had "500 analysts looking at Osama bin Laden threat information instead of two." [9/11 Commission Report, 4/13/04 (B)]

July 5, 2001: At issue is a July 5, 2001 meeting between Ashcroft and acting FBI Director Tom Pickard. That month, the threat of an al-Qaida attack was so high; the White House summoned the FBI and domestic agencies and warned them to be on alert. Yet, Pickard testified to the 9/11 commission that when he tried to brief Ashcroft just a week later, on July 12, about the terror threat inside the United States, he got the "brush-off. "[MSNBC, 6/22/04]

July 10, 2001: A Phoenix FBI agent sent a memorandum warning of Middle Eastern men taking flight lessons. He suspected bin Laden's followers and recommended a national program to check visas of suspicious flight-school students. The memo was sent to two FBI counter-terrorism offices, but no action was taken. [9/11 Congressional Inquiry, 7/24/03] Vice President Cheney said in May 2002, that he was opposed to releasing this memo to congressional leaders or to the media and public. [CNN, 5/20/02]

July 16, 2001: British spy agencies sent a report to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other top officials warning that al-Qaeda was in "the final stages" of preparing a terrorist attack in the West. The prediction was "based on intelligence gleaned not just from [British intelligence] but also from US agencies, including the CIA and the National Security Agency". The report stated that there was "an acute awareness" that an attack was "a very serious threat." [Times of London, 6/14/02]

In July of 2001: President Bush took the unusual step of sleeping on board an aircraft carrier off the coast of Italy after receiving a warning from the Egyptian government that the summit of world leaders in the city of Genoa would be targeted by al Qaeda. [New York Times, 9/26/01] The Italians meanwhile highly publicized their heightened security measures of increased police presence, antiaircraft batteries, and flying fighter jets. Apparently the press coverage of defenses caused al-Qaeda to cancel the attack. [BBC, 7/18/01, CNN, 7/18/01, Los Angeles Times, 9/27/01]

On July 26, 2001: Attorney General Ashcroft stopped flying commercial airlines due to a threat assessment. [CBS, 7/26/01] The report of this warning was omitted from the 9/11 Commission Report [Griffin 5/22/05].

Late July 2001: CBS reported, "Just days after [Mohamed] Atta return[s] to the U.S. from Spain, Egyptian intelligence in Cairo says it received a report from one of its operatives in Afghanistan that 20 al-Qaeda members had slipped into the US and four of them had received flight training on Cessnas." Egypt passed on the message to the CIA but never received a request for further information. [CBS News, 10/9/02]

Late July 2001: Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil was given information regarding a large attack on targets inside America, from the leader of the rebel Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), Tahir Yildash. Muttawakil relayed this information to the U.S. consul general, yet wasn?t taken seriously. One source blamed this on the administration?s "warning fatigue." [Independent, 9/7/02; Reuters, 9/7/02]

Aug 6, 2001: President Bush received a classified intelligence briefing at his Crawford, Texas ranch, warning that bin Laden might be planning to hijack commercial airliners. The memo was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US". The entire memo focused on the possibility of terrorist attacks inside the US and specifically mentioned the World Trade Center. Yet Bush later stated that the briefing "said nothing about an attack on America." [Newsweek, 5/27/02; New York Times, 5/15/02, Washington Post, 4/11/04, White House, 4/11/04, Intelligence Briefing, 8/6/01] .

Early August 2001: Britain gave the US another warning about an al-Qaeda attack. The previous British warning on July 16, 2001, was vague as to method, but this warning specified multiple airplane hijackings. This warning was said to have reached President Bush. [Sunday Herald, 5/19/02]

August, 2001: Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the US that suicide pilots were training for attacks on US targets. [Fox News, 5/17/02] The head of Russian intelligence also later stated, "We had clearly warned them" on several occasions, but they "did not pay the necessary attention." [Agence France-Presse, 9/16/01]

Late Summer, 2001: Jordanian intelligence (the GID) made a communications intercept and relayed it to Washington. The message stated that a major attack, code-named "The Big Wedding," had been planned inside the US and that aircraft would be used. "When it became clear that the information was embarrassing to Bush administration officials and congressmen who at first denied that there had been any such warnings before September 11, senior Jordanian officials backed away from their earlier confirmations." [International Herald Tribune, 5/21/02; Christian Science Monitor, 5/23/02]

On September 10, 2001, a group of top Pentagon officials received an urgent warning which prompted them to cancel their flight plans for the following morning. [Newsweek, 9/17/01] The 9/11 Commission Report omitted this report. [Griffin, 5/22/05] Given all the pre-warnings and information available before 9/11 it seems unconscionable that on May 16, 2002, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice could still claim to the press: "I don?t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile." She added that "even in retrospect" there was "nothing" to suggest that. [White House, 5/16/02] On June 7, 2002, President Bush stated, "Based on everything I?ve seen, I do not believe anyone could have prevented the horror of September the 11th." [Sydney Morning Herald, 6/8/02].

With so many warnings, it is difficult to explain inaction as mere incompetence. The existence of all of these warnings suggests, at least, that people within the US government knew the attacks were coming and deliberately allowed them to happen. This evidence would, however, be consistent with an even more frightening scenario- that the attacks were orchestrated by, or with the help of, people within our government.

From: kgbreport.com/www.projectcensored.org/newsflash/unanswered_questions_911.html

Obligatory quotation: (The terrorists) kind of ooch around the dark corners of the world and look out, peep out around the corner - in the meantime, send these suicide squads. (Downingtown, Pennsylvania, Oct. 22, 2002) George W. (Walker) Bush

(via "Amazing" Grace McGarvie on the alt.quotations Usenet newsgroup.)

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So there.
The kgb@kgb.com e-mail address is now something other than kgb@kgb.com saga.
kgbreport.com used to be kgb.com until December, 2007 when the domain name broker Trout Zimmer made an offer I couldn't refuse. Giving up kgb.com and adopting kgbreport.com created a significant problem, however. I had acquired the kgb.com domain name in 1993, and had since that time used kgb@kgb.com as my sole e-mail address. How to let people know that kgb@kgb.com was no longer kgb@kgb.com but rather kgbarkes@gmail.com which is longer than kgb@kgb.com and more letters to type than kgb@kgb.com and somehow less aesthetically pleasing than kgb@kgb.com but actually just as functional as kgb@kgb.com? I sent e-mails from the kgb@kgb.com address to just about everybody I knew who had used kgb@kgb.com in the past decade and a half but noticed that some people just didn't seem to get the word about the kgb@kgb.com change. So it occurred to me that if I were generate some literate, valid text in which kgb@kgb.com was repeated numerous times and posted it on a bunch of different pages- say, a blog indexed by Google- that someone looking for kgb@kgb.com would notice this paragraph repeated in hundreds of locations, would read it, and figure out that kgb@kgb.com no longer is the kgb@kgb.com they thought it was. That's the theory, anyway. kgb@kgb.com. Ok, I'm done. Move along. Nothing to see here...