The media have also speculated that Flight 93 was also heading for Three Mile Island (a nuclear power station designed to survive a plane crash) and Camp David (the President's holiday home where some Middle East peace deal had been agreed on with the participants having gone home decades ago).

It is tempting to believe that Flight 93 was heading for the Capitol given that there is some confession and it would have made more sense than Three Mile Island or Camp David. However this is flawed reasoning.

Had Flight 93 not been delayed at the airport and made it to its target on time then that target just might have been The Pentagon. Here it would have made a far greater impact. We know one 757 had hit The Pentagon to cause significant damage. Had another plane - Flight 93 - crashed into another 'wedge' opposite to the fire that did happen then there would have been a high likelihood that the entire Pentagon would have burned to the ground. The first fire would have served as an attack on the fire prevention systems allowing the fire from the second attack to burn unimpeded.

If we look at what happened at the World Trade Center two planes were used against one target. The Twin Towers might have appeared as two buildings, however, there was only one set of pumps for the sprinklers. The towers had been designed to survive impact by a plane but not the scenario of 9/11 when both towers were attacked. Also note that the second tower to be hit was the first to fall - in paart due to the lack of water pressure for the sprinklers.

Given that two planes were used for the one target in New York it is not unreasonable to consider that two planes were also intended for the Pentagon, with one fire able to knock out the sprinklers and another fire to burn the building down. This would have removed The Pentagon from the map rather than create damage that could be (and was) repaired.

Although there is a certain amount of logic to support The Pentagon being the target for Flight 93, this idea does not support the agenda of 'The War Against Terror'. Let's stick with the nursery stories and believe what the media say the interrogators water-boarded out of the guy in Guantanamo - Flight 93 was heading for The Capitol.

So one (probable) difference would have been that president Bush would not have asked Congress what to do if Congress was directly attacked. He would have simply decided what to do and done it, after having received the declaration from Nancy Pelosi.

This would have lead to the combination of having a single deciding vote of what to do with the armed forces at the command of a single politician, making for easy and quick decisions and the entire country clamoring for revenge.

I'm not saying it would necessarily have lead to immediate counterattack, but it certainly wouldn't have lowered the odds of that happening.

Congress and the British parliament were asked to vote for the war, this was not because their support was needed for the war to go ahead, had they all voted 'no' then that would not have trumped the 'let's kill' NATO card.

The Secretary General of NATO had a role in starting The War Against Terror, at the time the person in this role was one of Tony Blair's mates (his former Defence Secretary) and he was not American or voted into office by 'the peoples of NATO'.

In the absolute worst case of a more serious attack, the US armed services would assume control, and it would be unthinkable that they wouldn't restore democracy. 99% of our soldiery are patriots.

(Our eduction system hasn't done that much damage to our soldiers... yet. Some day, unless the intellectual trends in our nation change, our soldies will no longer believe that "democracy" is "practical," and will believe that people have to be forced to be good, and then we are not only going to be living under socaialism (as currently), we are going to be living under authoritarianism.)

Wikipedia says: "Socialism is an economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy. "Social ownership" may refer to cooperative enterprises, common ownership, state ownership, citizen ownership of equity, or any combination of these."

The US lives under a regulated capitalist economy.

So I may be using the term in an unconventional and confusing way.

That said, how would you describe a system with high taxation and redistribution of income, but without state ownership of the means of production? (That is how I characterize the US mainly, plus massive reuglation.) There needs to be a word for it.

"Socialism" seems to fit pretty well. The definition you are promulgating seems too narrow and technical. It doesn't really matter if the state owns the means of production, or simply seizes the profits created thereby. In the end, it's the same.

My comment asknowledges potential error, raises issues, asks questions, and does not provide answers that I can't provide yet.

Rather than dealing with any of that, you just make an assertion.

If you want "socalism" to mean only a subset of collective political coersion, you have to defend that intellectually with reason. That is how a shared language works.

Personally, I think of state ownership of the means of production as "communism," and redistribution of wealth, separate from ownership of the means of production, as "socialism."

Fair enough you want to label the current system of economic distribution in the USA, but you can't co-opt an existing term. For one it attempts to subvert a well understood concept, and tries to make it mean something else. There is no way that you can call the current system in the US socialist, unless you do not understand what socialism is, and how it works. And state controlled business is wildly different from taxed private business in a whole range of ways.

That said, I'm not actually sure I'm doing that when I equate massive taxation and redistribution with socialism.

High taxes and redistribution is an attempt to get away with socialism, without calling it "socialism." I don't think that is even controversial. It is the same goal with only slightly different means.

So in calling that "socialism," I'm just calling it for what it really is, in terms of motivation and goal, and partially in terms of method (which is still coercive, just at a different point).

In further support of my point---different socialists disagree on the precise techinical means of implemnting socialism anyway, so that would suggest that it may be a flexible enough term to encompass what I am talking about.

And yet further support of my point is that there is no existing word to describe what I am describing other than "socialism;" if there were, I would be obliged to use that other term.

The closest thing would be a "mixed economy." But 51% of Americans now take more from the tax system than they put in, and taxes are what I would call "very high." If you are taxed at a 50% rate, and you live to be 100, you have spent 50 years serving others. Plus we are in the process of implementing universal healthcare. Sounds like what socialist advocates would call a victory. (Of course socialism works so badly that you don't see good things coming out of it in practice, so nobody is claiming victory; but in terms of methodology, they are getting what they have advocated.)

Just because there are major issues with transparency and some aspects on the civil rights front is a far cray from "no more civil rights". http://www.freedomhouse.org/report-types/freedom-world

Eternal War?

Long and fruitless war, maybe? The Iraqi war is over and the Afghani war is all but over. Keeping some troops there doesn't constitute a "war", we have them all over the place.

The only legitimate claim is the idea that money is a big part of politics, which it obviously is and it's gotten worse. But to equate that to "single party rule" is absurd. On top of that I don't see how any of that is a result of 9/11.

I think the previous commenter meant the "War on Terror", which is essentially eternal because there is no opponent that could be defeated, and therefore it cannot be ended, only abandoned.

Most of the other measures are justified with the "War on Terror", including the removal of habeas corpus, removal of the 4th amendment, gutting of the 1st amendment, removal of judicial review and oversight etc.

1st amendment is also pretty much in tatters, with protesters now labeled as "low level terrorists", and journalists detained under anti-terrorist legislation (admittedly that was in the UK, but what do you think would happen to Greenwald if he were dumb enough to travel to the US??)

Yeah, to me that looks like civil rights pretty much gone. Of course, only if you do something the government doesn't like, but that's pretty much the point of civil rights...

Your comment is utterly ungrounded in reality. The "war on terror" has had pretty much no specific effect on any of the civil rights you mentioned.

1) Habeas corpus: the most recent change to the law of habeas corpus was AEDPA in 1996. Despite having "antiterrorism" in its name, it's largely addressed at preventing convicted criminals from abusing the habeas process through repeated frivolous habeas petitions and treating habeas essentially as a federal appeal from valid state court judgments. The "terrorism" provisions are distinct and don't concern habeas corpus, but rather financing and immigration issues related to terrorism. The post-9/11 Supreme Court cases on habeas have strengthened habeas corpus, not weakened it. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boumediene_v._Bush, and the predecessor cases Rasul v. Bush, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

2) Removal of the 4th amendment: the 4th amendment is probably not at the apex of its vitality, but it's on the upswing since 9/11. To the extent that it's been diminished over the years, that largely happened in the 1970's and the 1980's as a byproduct of that era's "tough on crime" movement. Even in the context of NSA spying, the legal basis for those programs are not rooted in anything post-9/11, but in the quite old third-party doctrine and this case from 1979 that created the data versus metadata distinction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland.

3) Gutting of the 1st amendment: the first amendment has simply never been stronger, and the U.S. continue to have among the strongest protections for free speech of any country in the world. Your comment about "protestors now labeled as 'low level terrorists,' and journalists detained under anti-terrorist legislation" is factually incorrect. What protestors in the U.S. have been charged with a crime based purely on their political speech? Some FBI documents stating that Occupy protestors might be a vector for domestic terrorism isn't a first amendment violation by any imaginable stretch of the imagination; to violate the first amendment, the "label" must have some legal significance, not simply be an expression of the opinion of someone in the government. Also, your question "what do you think would happen to Greenwald" if he traveled to the U.S. totally ignores the fact that the U.K. has historically had much weaker protections for free speech and journalism than the U.S.

> Yeah, to me that looks like civil rights pretty much gone

You seem to be mostly regurgitating the utterly uninformed conventional wisdom that permeates places like HN and Reddit.

For example, it has always been legal to kill enemies during war (with restrictions). We've just now expanded the definition of what a war is and what an enemy is, or changed the meaning of "torture" etc.

Of course many of these things started before 9/11, but if you can't detect the difference since then, you need to get out of the (law) library more often.

Edit:

For those who won't read the whole comment thread, the US has one of the highest top income tax rates in the OECD, one of the highest (or the highest?) corp tax rates in OECD, and arguably the lowest tax burden on poor/middle class in OECD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Effective_tax_rates,_US_hi...

[edit] Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Effective_Corporate_Tax... [/edit]

Second chart is straight nonsense: counts unrepatriated money - capital stuck abroad whilst awaiting change in broken US corp tax policy - as taxed at zero percent!

Both are cute gimmicks and nothing more.

Because per multiple sources, including this one: http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/01/news/economy/millionaire-tax... - it's demonstrably wrong, and not even close:

"France has the highest tax rate with a 75% rate on millionaires. In the U.S., the fight is over whether to extend the top rate to little more than half that amount."

"In Washington, of course, the fight is over whether to raise the top rate to a level just over half the amount they are arguing about in France -- to 39.6% from 35%. By contrast, numerous countries have top rates in the low to mid-50s, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Japan and Sweden. The world's highest rate is levied in sunny Aruba, where people making more than $171,000 face a top rate of 58.95%, according to figures compiled by KPMG."

As does this link: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/04/14/think-your-taxes-are-... - which also casts significant aspersions on your claim:

"For comparison: The United States

2012 top rate of income taxes: 35% (rising to 39.6% in 2013) Effective tax rate on $100,000: 26% (7.3% Social Security, 18.7% income tax) World rank on effective tax rate of $100,000: 55 Effective tax rate on $300,000: 30.5% (3.7% Social Security, 26.8% income tax) World rank on effective tax rate of $300,000: 53"

Going over 58% in 2014, thanks to Obamacare levy.

Like I said, one of the highest in OECD. And arguably most progressive in all of OECD: US lacks severe excise taxes and VATs which target the poor and middle class, coupled with generously progressive income tax brackets.

And of course those infamously high US corporate tax rates: often double the rates of other OECD nations (same link).

"55.9% (max of federal+state+local) 10%-39.6% (federal)[136] + 0%-13.3% (state)[137] + 0%-3% (local)"

lead to a link at the Tax Foundation that lists /only/ "Selected Federal Rates":

"136. "State Corporate Income Tax Rates, 2000-2013". Tax Foundation. Retrieved 2013-05-17. 137. "State Corporate Income Tax Rates, 2000-2013". Tax Foundation. Retrieved 2013-05-17."

Despite the titles thereof. I find it odd, too, that all the US references are to the Tax Foundation, which has had numerous criticisms leveled at it as a conservative think tank, not least of which:

"US economist Paul Krugman has characterised the Tax Foundation as "not a reliable source" while criticizing a report by the Tax Foundation comparing corporate tax rates in the United States to those in other countries.[46] Krugman has also accused the Tax Foundation of "deliberate fraud" in connection with a report it issued concerning the American Jobs Act.[47]"

There's all this not insubstantial disclaimer to your table:

"Some other taxes (for instance property tax, substantial in many countries, such as the USA) are not shown here. The table is not intended to represent the true tax burden to either the corporation or the individual in the listed country."

Not that there's not pause for thought. But it's intriguing that multiple independent sources list our highest task rates around the 30th to 55th in the world, but yet the Tax Foundation lists at nearly the top.

Sole reason for downvotes is because I'm going against anti-fatcat anti-inequality hysteria of the day.

Just as an example, Mit Romney's publicized tax rate was around 14.1% in 2011 on income that very comfortably puts him in the top income tax bracket. He just doesn't pay income tax on it.

1) Capital gains income is often first passed through a corporation, thus getting taxed at the insanely high US corp tax rate before getting taxed a second time at the moderately normal US cap gains rate. So US citizens are still paying more on average, even if it all doesn't show up as such on a tax return.

2) And Mitt's specifically! Let's count the misconceptions (note that I don't blame you - the media never described them and let the infamous "14.1%" figure stand because it's a good story):

a) Doesn't include state tax rate. That right there could easily tack on another 9%. Though it could also be zero if in Texas. Mitt of course lived in Mass, so it's just 4% or so.

b) No one deducted charitable contributions. As a Mormon, that was 10% of his income. So add another 1.4% to his tax rate there.

c) People counted his off-shore income, which is counted as income but not taxed until repatriated, as taxed at 0%. In fact it would be taxed at normal capital gains, which today is ~20% Federal + 4% Mass. Depending on the blend of foreign to domestic income, this could amount to a lot or just a little. Let's say his offshore income constituted 10% of overall income, for a ~1-2% higher average tax rate overall?

d) Most impactfully, no one's counting the Corp Tax rate which was paid before he took the Cap Gains. That's 39% Federal and another 8% Mass (~46% total), assuming that it's coming from Mass based corps. I'd say a solid chunk of his income is coming from this sort of income, probably in the ballpark of 70%, but let's just say it's 30% (of his income subject to this sort of double tax) to be super conservative.

Starting with base 14.1% + 4%(a) + 1.4%(b) + 1-2%(c) + (.3)(46%) = 21.5% just with very simple adjustments, and as high as 31.4% with a corp tax rate blended in a bit.

Effectively, a quarter of corporations pay zero corporation tax. Considering that the whole purpose of these constructs is to reduce the tax burden, I'd wager a guess that the rates paid tend towards the low end of the scale.

(http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/10/23/big-...)

Of course tax should be paid on income that was shifted off-shore for tax reasons, but of course the monied interests are lobbying for a "tax holiday", which they have "successfully" done in the past. "Success" in quotes because the policy failed to achieve the things that were used to peddle the ludicrous idea: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405297020363310... It was highly successful in avoiding taxes, which is why they are lobbying for it again.

What do voluntary charitable contributions have to do with taxes (apart from him not deducting some of them in order to not have his tax rate look even more ridiculously low than it already is)?