Recently, AlterNet decided to save all skeptics of the 'official' 9/11 conspiracy from their doubts and delusions.
http://www.alternet.org/story/37647/
{I tried to respond at AlterNet but they prefer to limit the length of all comments.}
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Ms. Allen’s view of 9/11 is valid. The ‘official’ Bush Administration conspiracy scenario is entirely true and all competing models are false.
Does it then follow that the numerous skeptics are foolish and unscientific—their minds clouded by faith?
In fact, it is the Bush Administration, the Pentagon, and their supplicants in the corporate mass media that have done the most to catalyze suspicion and skepticism about 9/11. It is, in fact, they who have demanded that we take everything on faith, stifled open inquiry, suppressed evidence and information, stonewalled investigations—even Congressional investigations—and done everything imaginable to make it appear to many reasonable observers that they have much to hide.
In any crime one looks for motive, means, and opportunity. The Bush Administration clearly had a powerful motive for allowing the 9/11 attacks to proceed. Almost their entire international and domestic agenda is built on 9/11. Certainly, the pre-planned wars against Afghanistan, Iraq (and perhaps Iran) would have been nearly impossible without 9/11 as a rationale. The means and opportunity, of course, are open to debate.
It is also true, however, that evasive behavior, obfuscation and lying, and suppression and destruction of evidence by a suspect in a crime will engender suspicion. The Bush/Cheney cabal engaged in a whole catalogue of just such suspicious acts after 9/11 from destroying steel girders without analysis, to blocking open access to aircraft ‘black boxes’, FAA tapes, and Pentagon videotapes, and, most importantly, opposing any and all open investigations into 9/11.
When the government itself suppresses evidence that would prove their case, isn’t skepticism to the ‘official’ conspiracy a rational response? Why not release all the video footage of the plane hitting the Pentagon as it was apparently captured on several security cameras—including a nearby gas station and hotel? Why did Bush and Cheney insist on speaking with the 9/11 Commission together, in complete secret, and not under oath? Does this really install confidence that they have nothing to hide from the public?
Personally, I find the idea that the Bush Administration allowed 9/11 to happen for political gain to be extremely disturbing. Initially, I accepted the official explanation. After a friend raised the possibility of government involvement n 9/11, however, I decided to do research to refute her "crazy" notions.
What I immediately noticed was that the ‘official’ version was presented as a national test of faith. The extensive evidence that contradicted this account was largely ignored, even when initially acknowledged in the ‘mainstream’ media.
These are a few of the most important 9/11 disconnects that trouble me:
1. NORAD ceased to function on the morning of 9/11. Subsequent explanations and timelines either contradict each other or are wildly implausible. No reasonable ‘official’ explanation accounts for the failure to get a single jet fighter into the air to protect the airspace over Washington, D.C.
2. Bush is permitted to remain reading “My Pet Goat” in a Florida classroom during the attacks although normal Secret Service response would be to move him immediately to an undisclosed location. This suggests absolute foreknowledge that Bush is not a target.
3. General Mahmoud Ahmed, head of the Pakistani ISI, is linked in the press to funds wired to Mohammad Atta. Ahmed is conveniently in Washington sitting with Porter Goss on the morning of 9/11. Ahmed is immediately “retired” when the story comes out yet the U.S. government shows no interest in interviewing him--or bombing Pakistan.
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&the_isi:_a_more_detailed_look=mahmoodAhmed
4. Numerous war games were scheduled to exactly coincide with 9/11 attacks and appear to have undermined normal air defenses.
5. Overwhelming numbers of warnings, including over a dozen from other national intelligence agencies poured into Washington in June and July of 2001, yet the Bush Administration did nothing apparently.
6. Various people, including John Ashcroft, Pentagon officials, and Willie Brown received warnings to avoid commercial aircraft shortly before 9/11.
7. Numerous war games and scenarios from the Pentagon through the FBI were run anticipating using commercial aircraft to attack the World Trade Center and Pentagon, yet Condi Rice announced afterward that one had ever thought of it. This was just one of an endless litany of bald-faced lies issued by the Bush Administration after 9/11.
8. David Schippers, a major Republican attorney involved in the Clinton impeachment, accused John Ashcroft of deliberately stonewalling on FBI foreknowledge of the impending attacks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_Conspiracy
9. Peculiar financial manipulations that appear to anticipate and profit from 9/11 go unresolved.
10. The Bush Administration first refused to investigate 9/11. Then when forced to respond they created a toothless commission led by Rice co-author and Bush insider Phillip Zelikow. Zelikow carefully managed all aspects of the investigation. In other words, the Bush Administration investigated itself.
11. Numerous mainstream sources report that several of the hijackers are still alive on September 12 and yet this oddity has no impact on the official conspiracy account. Indeed, the ‘official’ conspiracy account appears oddly immune to facts and falsification—a quality typically found in faith based belief systems such as religion.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1559151.stm
12. Recently, information emerged that a Pentagon intelligence team, Able Danger, had massive documentation on several of the reputed 9/11 hijackers--a claim that completely contradicts the 9/11 Commission Report. In response, the Pentagon and Whitehouse have blocked further Congressional inquiries. Much of the Able Danger info has already been destroyed by the Pentagon.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_2418.shtml
As numerous other respondents have presented well-reasoned arguments and cited convincing lists of challenging facts and unanswered questions, I will stop there.
Even if Ms. Allen is correct in her views, however, her incredibly smug and condescending tone is hardly likely to persuade skeptics that she is treating their concerns seriously. Skeptics of the ‘official’ 9/11 conspiracy (all accounts of 9/11 involve conspiracies) are depicted as psychologically infantile: “There is something comforting about a world where someone is in charge -- either for good (think gods) or evil (think Bush insiders plotting 9/11).”
Her snide innuendo that 9/11 ‘conspiracy’ proponents are dominated by childlike “faith” does a grave disservice to meticulous early researchers such as Paul Thompson
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0416,mondo1,52830,6.html
and Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed,
http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq37.html
and many other thoughtful researchers who have relied exclusively on factual analysis and eschewed speculation.
If she’s sincere in her efforts to convince 9/11 skeptics of their errors, I suggest a modicum of respect and a serious response to their legitimate concerns. Personally, I would feel greatly relieved if someone could prove to me that the Bush Administration played no role (other than heartbreaking incompetence and opportunism) in 9/11. If she really hoped to offer a sensible, fair, and factual response to 9/11 skeptics, she has failed.
I welcome criticism and intelligent challenges. I do not know with any certainty what happened on the morning of 9/11. I cannot claim to understand precisely why the three WTC buildings collapsed on 9/11. (I certainly have looked at a lot of evidence and have my suspicions. The steel girders, the evidence that would confirm or refute the use of explosives, was quickly shipped away to China and India for destruction.)
I do know that a mountain of evidence contradicts the ‘official’ conspiracy story and that we have been asked to swallow this rendition largely on faith. Ms. Allen, unfortunately, has done little to change my mind on that.
Yes, there is a plethora of wild alternative “conspiracy theories” out there. Some are heavy on speculation and short on fact; some contradict each other so they obviously all can’t be correct. The skepticism, however, I think is entirely justified and healthy. We have not been given an honest accounting of what took place on 9/11. Maybe everything transpired exactly as the Bushites and their apologists maintain, but we shouldn’t be expected to take that on faith.
The reason that alternative ‘conspiracy theories’ have grown like mushrooms in the post 9/11 darkness is that the Bush Administration and their apologists (including perhaps even a few well-meaning liberals) have repeatedly blocked the light with secrecy, sophistry, manipulation of evidence, and outright lies.
All that most skeptics are really demanding is an open examination of 9/11. A group of international scholars working with an independent government agency holding subpoena powers could be a start. (I realize that it will never happen, of course.)
Again, let’s never forget, the 9/11 Commission was carefully selected by Bush himself (well, at least his handlers), and directed by a member of the Bush team, Philip Zelikow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_D._Zelikow (Please consider Zelikow’s remarkable academic and research interests--including the origins of national mythologies and the effects of terrorist attacks on the masses—as well as his intimate ties to both Bush Administrations.)
Although I have no problem with AlterNet challenging my views on any issue, I expect something less shallow and smug than this essay. Perhaps Ms. Allen could finally present some of the “overwhelming evidence” that confirms the Bush Administration’s account of 9/11. I would look forward to reading that. In the meantime, perhaps Ms. Allen should stop demeaning 9/11 skeptics for their healthy demands for clear and honest answers on what actually transpired.
