I was going to turn a part of overpressure.com into a clearinghouse for debunking info on the 9/11 stuff. But the sheer volume of the crankery out there is stunning. For example, something brought a moonbat round to comment here. Let's just take a look at part of his spew:

12.In the late 1990s a group of right-wing nutcases (Cheney-Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld-Feith-Perle et al) called the "Project for a New American Century" or P.N.A.C. layed out their plans for what they hoped would secure American global dominance for the long term. Part of that plan was building an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea fields across Turkmenistan, across Afghanistan to Pakistan and a port. They also unsuccessfully badgered Clinton to invade Iraq in 1998 because of its massive oil resources as the world's 2nd-largest oil producer! They even stated in a paper called "Rebuilding America's Defenses" in 1998 or '99 that the American public would not accept massive increases in defense spending and a more aggressive military posture without a large catalyzing, galvanizing event like "a new Pearl Harbor". When "W" came to power in 1998 these madmen became his top advisors. In July of 2001 they made an ultimatum to the government of Afghanistan (the only holdout in their pipeline scheme), saying "Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold or we'll bury you under a carpet of bombs". The Afghan governemnt refused, so on 11 September of that year the C.I.A. and highest levels of the military and Bush administration carried out theri 9/11 false flag operation, blaming it on "Al Qaeda" and using it as an "excuse" to invade Afghanistan (and tried to use it as an "excuse" to invade Iraq!) and have basically used it as an excuse for everything since. For more infmation about the P.N.A.C., see:

http://www.americanfreepress.net/12_24_02/America_Pearl_Harbored/america_pearl_harbored.html
http://www.shout.net/~bigred/PHarbor.htm
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/weiner6.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/leopold02192003.html

Wow, where to even start. I mean, how can you make any headway with someone who writes "When "W" came to power in 1998 these madmen became his top advisors." 1998? That isn't right. Seems to me there was another President in 1998. And PNAC? A staple of moonbats, but here's my take on that. And this guy in his frothing didn't notice that Clinton didn't invade in 1998.

I don't even know why one would bother debunking with these people. Their minds are made up, or deranged, or both. No amount of evidence, or showing how silly they are, will fix it.

I mean, I know people who saw the plane go into the Pentagon, I know people who were in the recovery that day and saw the children's luggage in the wreckage, and saw big burly firemen breakdown when they saw that luggage.

But, hey, Howard Dean is the head of the Democrat Party, and he seems to think this kind of thing is good.

Here's Yon's full story on the fight in Mosul where LTC Kurilla was injured.

Wow. Now that's some reporting.

Glad to hear Erik is okay. Well, as okay as someone shot 3 times can be.

Once again, Jim Geraghty over at TKS sparks me into writing about it. Last time, I argued that Geraghty's predicition that it would be huge was wrong. Now, he is noting that there are a lot of "issues" here. He does a good job explaining "what we know." And he has a paragraph that I think is key:

The Gorelick “wall” is a bit of a side issue for now. (First let’s figure out exactly what Able Danger knew, when it learned it, and how the process of trying to contact the FBI went.) On the one hand, as a Justice Department official, Gorelick’s directives should not have been seen as the last word at William Cohen’s Department of Defense. On the other hand, as Ed and William Tate noted, her infamous memo was also directed to the DOJ Counsel of Intelligence Policy and Review, which advises the Attorney General, CIA, FBI, the Department of Defense and State on “questions of law, regulation, and guidelines as well as the legality of domestic and overseas intelligence operations.” In other words, both that memo and the attitude from the top made the priorities clear in the Clinton administration: Don’t foul up our prosecutions by using inadmissible intelligence gathered by foreign sources. In many cases, that is wise policy – you don’t want a criminal or terrorist walking free because the prosecutor was relying on inadmissible evidence. But the problem is, that puts a higher priority on a clean prosecution than arresting these guys before they commit their criminal act. If the act is counterfeiting, that’s not such a big deal. But if the act is crashing airliners into skyscrapers, then any court case is moot.

I wrote 2 years ago:

I also read The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot, And Why the FBI and CIA Failed to Stop It, by John Miller and Michael Stone. Just read it. I don't know why we bothered with a 9/11 commission, the whole story is right there.

That is all I wrote about the book. So let me point you to an Amazon review:

This eye-opening investigation into anti-American terrorist activities would have been even more shocking if information hadn't already started to dribble out about the inadequacies of the FBI and CIA in tracking and preventing such activities. But every page of this information-packed report seems to announce ineffectual actions, missed opportunities and frustrated agents on the ground blocked by the FBI hierarchy, turf battles and political lack of will. Even by the mid-1990s, when al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were well known to U.S. authorities, strong action wasn't taken because, one State Department official says here, their acts hadn't exceeded an "acceptable level of terrorism."

The Cell describes exactly that attitude - "Don’t foul up our prosecutions by using inadmissible intelligence gathered by foreign sources." But it didn't come from Jamie Gorelick, or certainly not from just Gorelick. It also came from career law enforcement people in the FBI and the NYPD, as well as career prosecutors in the Justice Department.

The key then was that terrorism was considered a law enforcement. And it was not an unreasonable position at the time - I mean, even the inestimable Glenn Reynolds had this to say:

my pre-9/11 view was that we were best off treating Islamist terrorism as a law-enforcement matter, but otherwise trying to ignore it until it collapsed under the weight of its inherent idiocy. That was wrong, but it's hard for me to blame the Clinton folks for seeing things the way that I did -- except when, occasionally, they pretend otherwise.

Here's my admission - I thought exactly the same thing. 9/11 did indeed change everything on that. Law enforcement wasn't getting it done. The President ordered Attorney General Ashcroft to change from a focus on prosecution to one of prevention. In a prevention world, ignoring Able Danger was a bad idea. But what, exactly, would the FBI have done with the information? They couldn't have arrested Atta then - what would have been the charge?

So Able Danger is important only if we choose to learn from it. And as I point out, even post 9/11, the Republican controlled Congress has chosen to prevent the DoD from doing what Able Danger did. But I hope that some organization is doing that kind of datamining and acting on it.