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Lies We Still Tell Ourselves about 9/11
Have we managed to silence ourselves as well as the world with our own fears?
By their books, ye shall know them.
Smoke spews from a tower of the World Trade Center. (GETTY IMAGES)
I'm talking about the volumes, the libraries – nay, the very halls of literature – which the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001 have spawned. Many are spavined with pseudo-patriotism and self-regard, others rotten with the hopeless mythology of CIA/Mossad culprits, a few (from the Muslim world, alas) even referring to the killers as "boys", almost all avoiding the one thing which any cop looks for after a street crime: the motive.
Why so, I ask myself, after 10 years of war, hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths, lies and hypocrisy and betrayal and sadistic torture by the Americans – our MI5 chaps just heard, understood, maybe looked, of course no touchy-touchy nonsense – and the Taliban? Have we managed to silence ourselves as well as the world with our own fears? Are we still not able to say those three sentences: The 19 murderers of 9/11 claimed they were Muslims. They came from a place called the Middle East. Is there a problem out there?
American publishers first went to war in 2001 with massive photo-memorial volumes. Their titles spoke for themselves: Above Hallowed Ground, So Others Might Live, Strong of Heart, What We Saw, The Final Frontier, A Fury for God, The Shadow of Swords... Seeing this stuff piled on newsstands across America, who could doubt that the US was going to go to war? And long before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, another pile of tomes arrived to justify the war after the war. Most prominent among them was ex-CIA spook Kenneth Pollack's The Threatening Storm – and didn't we all remember Churchill's The Gathering Storm? – which, needless to say, compared the forthcoming battle against Saddam with the crisis faced by Britain and France in 1938.
There were two themes to this work by Pollack – "one of the world's leading experts on Iraq," the blurb told readers, among whom was Fareed Zakaria ("one of the most important books on American foreign policy in years," he drivelled) – the first of which was a detailed account of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction; none of which, as we know, actually existed. The second theme was the opportunity to sever the "linkage" between "the Iraq issue and the Arab-Israeli conflict".
The Palestinians, deprived of the support of powerful Iraq, went the narrative, would be further weakened in their struggle against Israeli occupation. Pollack referred to the Palestinians' "vicious terrorist campaign" – but without any criticism of Israel. He wrote of "weekly terrorist attacks followed by Israeli responses (sic)", the standard Israeli version of events. America's bias towards Israel was no more than an Arab "belief". Well, at least the egregious Pollack had worked out, in however slovenly a fashion, that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had something to do with 9/11, even if Saddam had not.
In the years since, of course, we've been deluged with a rich literature of post-9/11 trauma, from the eloquent The Looming Tower of Lawrence Wright to the Scholars for 9/11 Truth, whose supporters have told us that the plane wreckage outside the Pentagon was dropped by a C-130, that the jets that hit the World Trade Centre were remotely guided, that United 93 was shot down by a US missile, etc. Given the secretive, obtuse and sometimes dishonest account presented by the White House – not to mention the initial hoodwinking of the official 9/11 commission staff – I am not surprised that millions of Americans believe some of this, let alone the biggest government lie: that Saddam was behind 9/11. Leon Panetta, the CIA's newly appointed autocrat, repeated this same lie in Baghdad only this year.
There have been movies, too. Flight 93 re-imagined what may (or may not) have happened aboard the plane which fell into a Pennsylvania wood. Another told a highly romanticised story, in which the New York authorities oddly managed to prevent almost all filming on the actual streets of the city. And now we're being deluged with TV specials, all of which have accepted the lie that 9/11 did actually change the world – it was the Bush/Blair repetition of this dangerous notion that allowed their thugs to indulge in murderous invasions and torture – without for a moment asking why the press and television went along with the idea. So far, not one of these programmes has mentioned the word "Israel" – and Brian Lapping's Thursday night ITV offering mentioned "Iraq" once, without explaining the degree to which 11 September 2001 provided the excuse for this 2003 war crime. How many died on 9/11? Almost 3,000. How many died in the Iraq war? Who cares?
Publication of the official 9/11 report – in 2004, but read the new edition of 2011 – is indeed worth study, if only for the realities it does present, although its opening sentences read more like those of a novel than of a government inquiry. "Tuesday ... dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States... For those heading to an airport, weather conditions could not have been better for a safe and pleasant journey. Among the travellers were Mohamed Atta..." Were these guys, I ask myself, interns at Time magazine?
But I'm drawn to Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan whose The Eleventh Day confronts what the West refused to face in the years that followed 9/11. "All the evidence ... indicates that Palestine was the factor that united the conspirators – at every level," they write. One of the organisers of the attack believed it would make Americans concentrate on "the atrocities that America is committing by supporting Israel". Palestine, the authors state, "was certainly the principal political grievance ... driving the young Arabs (who had lived) in Hamburg".
The motivation for the attacks was "ducked" even by the official 9/11 report, say the authors. The commissioners had disagreed on this "issue" – cliché code word for "problem" – and its two most senior officials, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, were later to explain: "This was sensitive ground ...Commissioners who argued that al-Qa'ida was motivated by a religious ideology – and not by opposition to American policies – rejected mentioning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict... In their view, listing US support for Israel as a root cause of al-Qa'ida's opposition to the United States indicated that the United States should reassess that policy." And there you have it.
So what happened? The commissioners, Summers and Swan state, "settled on vague language that circumvented the issue of motive". There's a hint in the official report – but only in a footnote which, of course, few read. In other words, we still haven't told the truth about the crime which – we are supposed to believe – "changed the world for ever". Mind you, after watching Obama on his knees before Netanyahu last May, I'm really not surprised.
When the Israeli Prime Minister gets even the US Congress to grovel to him, the American people are not going to be told the answer to the most important and "sensitive" question of 9/11: why?
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Show All"Palestine was the factor that united the conspirators – at every level." That says it all.
"That says it all", only if you believe the standard story. Most people fail to understand that the improbabilities of independent events multiply together, to produce an impossibility. What is the probability that a steel frame building hit by a plane or with a fire in the basement will fall down completely into its foundation? It has never happened in history, not even once. Even in Hiroshima, the steel frame buildings hit by a nuclear bomb did not collapse like that. So, we know that it is improbable. Let say, p=.01, which means probably 1 in 100 steel frame buildings will collapse like that. That three buildings collapsed like that is .01x.01x.01=.000001. Then, independently, what is the probability that a jet liner hitting the Pentagon at the first floor, will have its wings, tail, and engines disappear without causing damage to the lawn or to the building facade? Let's say, that happens 1% of the time, or p=.01. That moves the total probability to .00000001. Then what is the probability that a group of Israeli agents would dance on the roof of a building in New Jersey as they watched the WTC fires and collapse? Maybe that happens 10% of the time. Now the total probability is .000000001. Then what is the probability that all of the surveillance video cameras that recorded "the plane" hitting the Pentagon would be confiscated and withheld from the commission investigating the events? What? 10% likelihood? Another p=.10. Now the total probability is .0000000001. Then what is the probability that the US Air Force could not scramble and intercept any of 4 jet liners hijacked and flying around for an hour and a half? Let's say the US Air Force is really incompetent and fails like this 10% of the time. Again, p=.10. Now our total probability of the standard story is .00000000001, that is such a low likelihood, that it is an impossibility. In science, the norm is that any theory that has likelihood p=.05 or lower can be dismissed as untrue. An explanation that has a likelihood of p=.00000000001 is so low that believing it is an act of faith, not an act of rational thinking. The standard story that four hijacked airliners caused 3 WTC buildings to collapse and caused the Pentagon to be hit is so improbable that it cannot be true. Other explanations with greater likelihood need to be considered, like there were demolitions planted in the WTC buildings, like the Pentagon was hit by a missile.
Serious Citizen
Extremely well said as your comments are laid out in a most intelligent and persuasive manner. Keep up the good work by doing what you are doing and that is by Questioning Authority.
I like this - I think exactly the same way in part.
Have any mathematicians offered us
an analysis based on the probablity of all three
building collapsing in similar and completely unprecedented fashion?
You could argue that WTC 1 & 2 are not "independent events" in some
sense, but surely WTC 3 *is*.
Wow! What are the odds that someone will believe whatever confirms their prior beliefs while ignoring anything that negates that possibility, however firm the evidence?
The WTC buildings 1 & 2 were built using techniques and materials that must take into account it's unprecedented height. Saying they were "steel-framed buildings" because they happened to use steel to support the weight of each floor does not take into account the rigid, weight-bearing external structure enclosing it, or the manner in which the internal structure designed to take the weight of each floor had been attached to this unique "exo-skeleton" structure so that could take enough weight off the internal steel frame they knew would be unable to to support the weight being imposed on it due the unprecedented height it was expected to reach.
So right off the hop this notion about comparing it to the manner in which other steel-framed buildings have behaved when hit by an international passenger jet fully loaded with the fuel (what? you didn't? ) required to make such journeys, is patently absurd.
Then to calculate the statistical probability of various events happening together when the very existence of each relies on hearsay evidence, half-knowledge, and no understanding of statistical correlation, is...to put it mildly....very poor science.
To begin with, .05 is the point at which a correlation coefficient cuts off the possibility of their being any chance whatsoever of a statistical correlation between two events and says nothing about whether either or any of the events being measured are themselves factual. That would bring us back to matters like plucking numbers out of the air based on nothing can be used to determine the probability of others. The answer is NO.
The thing is.... the "truther" movement itself began when a physicist whose prior work on cold-fusion ( right!) gained him tenure at BYU - a university with faculty only slightly less motivated by their faith than Bob Jones U - made a statement that he thought the attacks on the WTC couldn't have happened the way we saw it on the news. That was used, along with an "expose" made by amateur film-maker Dylan Avery, to promote Alex Jones' own agenda as the nation's premiere conspiracy nut . That, when placed against a back drop of official dishonesty of the Bush administration, whom we now know had a great deal of highly embarrassing, even criminal activities they needed to cover up....and what we have after 10 years of dishonesty and delusion by all concerned is a "truther" movement now so far removed from the original events that it's adherents no longer bother to check their facts, simply accepting the original premise without question.
But what you are doing by this is making it very difficult for those with growing *actual* evidence of a PNAC-Likud-MIC plan to refocus the cold-war military apparatus on militant Islam rather than allow all that might to dissipate as a result of some impending draw-down inspired by the Soviet Bloc's collapse, remains unheard. And the reason is that any serious journalist who values employment fears that the very mention of a Bush-related conspiracy will be met instantly by the howls of derision now being leveled at the unsupported theories of the truthers, birthers, apocalyptic nut-jobs, etc.
gWilliams- In response to your opening statement- (it was not actually a "question")- I would say the odds are a hundred percent. And your first line is not statistical proof but 'pretty strong' anecdotal evidence of that. The people working to expose the conspiracy behind the Mass Murder of September 11th did not form a movement behind your cabal of weirdos, nor did it originate from any single University Professor. Your entire derisive spiel with pathetic "admissions" about 'highly embarrassing, even criminal activities they needed to cover up...' is just the sort of luke warm thinking and lack of moral content that drives the problem-you are not the Adult In the Room, and we don't need to hear from any more journalists who value employment, we need to hear form people that value truth. Here is clue a to their identity: You are not one of those people.
What is more amazing than people seeking confirmation of their beliefs, is that people can see three buildings collapse as if by demolition, and have absolutely complete confidence that they did not see buildings collapse by demolition. Yes, the two WTC towers did not have I-beam girder construction but were steel framed and were designed to withstand being hit by an airplane. There were several reinforced sections in the towers designed for the very purpose of stopping a continuous collapse. Building #7 was a conventional I-beam girder building, and it too fell down, just like the two towers, without being hit by an airplane. How likely is that? If it did collapse as if by demolition because of a fire in the basement, then all sky scrapers in the world should be evacuated because architectural engineers have something very seriously wrong in their understanding of the safety and strength of steel frame buildings. That no jurisdictions have closed any sky scrapers, that no jurisdictions are reconsidering building codes, that means that no jurisdictions believe that Building #3 came down because of a fire in the basement.
Then there is the very, very unlikely event that a BBC reporter could report that Building #7 had collapsed, with the intact building in the background. Imagine at the Dallas Airport where President Kennedy is arriving and getting into his limo, that a reporter announces that President Kennedy has been shot, even as the very much alive President Kennedy is waving to the crowd in the background of the same video. In the case of the WTC, the reporter and everyone else who has faith in the standard story, has said it was just an ordinary mistake that reporters sometimes make. Ooops. In the JFK hypothetical, no one would have accepted an "oops" as the explanation. There would have been a very, very, very serious investigation of who told the reporter or the news copy-editor that a tragic event had happened before it happened.
GWilliam's understanding of statistical probability is lacking. P-values are used in more statistical methods than correlations. But in the example of picking numbers randomly, that is what is supposed to happen in roulette. Imagine a roulette wheel with only 10 slots, 1 to 10. If the first spin came to number 2, that is p=.10, not so improbable. If the second spin also were 2, that is now p=.10x.10=.01. Uncommon, but it could happen by chance. If the 3rd spin again were 2, that is now p=.10x.10x.10=.001. This is getting strange. If the 4th spin were again 2, then p=.0001, and we would say that the probability of getting four 2s in a row is so improbable, that we cannot believe that this is being done by random. There is another explanation for these independent events. Namely, cheating. The believers who have faith in the standard story about the Sept. 11 events would get angry about seeking another explanation for why the roulette wheel keeps getting 2. They would say, "Have faith in the authorities." The true believers would find it unthinkable and slanderous to say that casino owners have the motives or low morals to cheat us. If the croupier correctly calls out the roulette number while the wheel is still spinning, the true believers in the standard story would shrug and say that that is just a common error that croupiers sometimes make.
"people can see three buildings collapse as if by demolition, and have absolutely complete confidence that they did not see buildings collapse by demolition."
The fact that you expect people to see a demolition is absurd. A plane hit the building, exploded on impact, causing a severe fire from burning jet fuel. Does stuff like that usually happen during a demolition? To any sane person, it looked like the collapse was caused by the impact and fire of an airplane, not a demolition. The fact that the collapse looked similar to a demolition is irrelevant with the backdrop of a huge hole and a burning airplane in the side of the building.
Now, whatever caused the collapse is not for me to say, but I trust the scientists. They have yet to fail me.
I trust the pseudo scientists, nutjobs, and other blow-tards to make untrue and irrelevant accusations of anyone that doesn't agree with them. But most of all, I expect them to confuse everything so badly that nobody cares any more.
True, and since Intel knew an attack was coming the dumbest thing they could do would be to put explosives in the building which would be impossible to hide and you can't hide a missile hitting the pentagon.
They can get away with pretending not to know it was coming and taking intel off the Saudi connections before and Blacking out the whole chapter and more in the 9/11 report about Saudi Arabia, but 3 buildings being planted with bombs would not only take the blame off the Hijackers, it would get Bush killed by his own security if he planted bombs.
Even Osama said on video he never expected the towers to Fall.
Just an attack on the Pentagon alone would be enough for Bush's endless war.
But I expect the Believers to attack me now as usual for rejecting their absurd package.
I want a real investigation to start with the release of all the records first.
It seems the Truthers if they want more truth would want that too.
To see the raw footage, in slow motion, for all the events of the mass murder, there's video that's extremely well done, and avoids theorizing, just fact finding, try brasschecktv at www.brasschecktv.com/page/4960.html
As for the dumbest idea being to put explosives in the building target, it's the opposite, the military and others in government have -- in the past -- developed plans to murder citizens and destroy city areas in order to initiate war (against Cuba but Kennedy turned them down and Miami was saved). Can't you see how intelligent they were? Ethical, maybe not.
As for Bush's risk, he had Cheney in control of the War Room to keep the AF from launching, and the owner of the buildings was amply paid off by his massively boosted insurance coverage -- just 3 months prior -- on buildings that had major remodeling needed for asbestos (another reason for figuring the need for bombs since burning was not reliable). And the idea that government agents were on the scene at the one gas station across from the Pentagon, as well as the hotel along that side, to confiscate the security cameras that captured the incoming flight, WITHIN MINUTES OF THE IMPACT, tells you how thoroughly planned this was. And none of those cameras' data was released for years, so you can imagine how reliable those films were after doctoring. Not to mention the idea that the massively secure Pentagon could only produce one vague clip of film that showed next to nothing. This was not a renegade operation with some calculating-challenged Bush Jr in charge.
Except that the engineering to sustain an impact by a plane -- including the entirely likely presence of large amounts of fuel -- was in the designs.
Have a look at the NIST leader of the 'science' that decided -- in advance -- that alternate explanations were not to be explored.
Further, the building had been -- just 3 months before 9/11 -- been hugely insured beyond belief as sensible real estate practice.
Further, the weekend previous to the attack, the buildings were shut down for security work that required all electric power to be disconnected, yet never was this explained though survivors brought the connection to the explosive installation possibility to the attention of the investigators.
Scientists are bought every day, just look at the drug industry and the FDA and how illicit are the job transferring between regulator and industry is.
Belief in scientists is not scientific, so if you wish to honor the idea of science, try practicing it like we do.
You are a fool. I mean, I could go on, but you've already done the best good job yourself of proving it. Also, your last paragraph is incoherent.
What matters is whether the events can/should be considered correlated or uncorrelated. Whether they are depends on your hypothesis concerning causes. Obviously WTC 1 & 2 cannot be considered completely independent events. WTC 7 is a case apart - it shared neither the structure nor the jetliner impacts of WTC 1 & 2.
So we have at least two events - each very improbable, happening same place same time. What are the odds?
Now figure in all the other failures and mis-steps -- by the official narrative we require independent events -- thus "coincidences" of staggering improbability all falling in line to "allow the attacks to succeed". Is there a simpler hypothesis consistent with the facts?
The hole in your sneering remarks about Truthers -- being led by an incompetent former cold fusion fraud -- is that the cold fusion concept has been VALIDATED, though now with a different explanation and name. Try to keep up with the SCIENCE. Check it out. MIT lied, presented doctored data, likely to preserve their funding flows. And the latest developments are coming -- with better understanding -- from teams in Italy. It may actually be something that will save the sustainability movement. Assuming you care about the planet surviving the turbulent weather, with increasing frequency of extreme events, not the goofy named 'warming' trend junk. Check that out too, if you care one way or the other.
Here is new evidence that came out in my local paper today.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/new-evidence-links-saudi-arabia-to-911-hijackers-graham/1190773
This is really interesting to me personally because my friend who helped me find more evidence of the JFK coup cover-up on our trip to Dallas in 93, was interviewed by the FBI after 9/11 because Atta, the lead hijacker tried to buy a car from her before 9/11.
Lately her business has been destroyed by false accusations about her.
Makes sense to me.
Motive is indeed an interesting question. But the insinuations about Israel are without merit, since the Israelis intelligence operatives forthrightly warned the U.S. well prior to 9/11 that they had evidence to show what was going to happen. Now what do you suppose they would think of the U.S. when that warning was unheeded, calculatingly surely. The Israelis also were actively intending that their own people in NY on the known day and place would be absent. Any decent sovereign nation protects its citizens, wouldn't you expect that? Hence what do you think the Israeli operatives were doing that known target day? Sleeping? Not likely. Dancing on the rooftops is thoroughly what any sane operative would do, since they had saved their own, including last minute interventions to reach each in time.
If you want to look for motive, try the Saudis since that also is a clear factor that all of the supposed terrorists had in common. Then look for the funds that supported this operation. Then watch your Obama bow and scrape, watch Bush beg and shuffle. It's been rumored that in the deals arranged for U.S. access to Saudi oil fields back in history, the agreement has arranged that a major percentage of Saudi princely wealth be held in the Federal Reserve. And the connections between the Bush/CIA empire are rampant with Saudi connections. And the Saudi princes have a clear motive for wanting Saddam put out of their oil operations in OPEC.
The idea that the Saudi princes should be willing to get rid of an Arab brother in Iraq, and not care whether this relieved any pressures on Israel, to the amazement of this writer, is clearly a symptom of middle eastern princely ethics.
"others rotten with the hopeless mythology of CIA/Mossad culprits..." he drivelled.
Alexander Cockburn, Robert Fisk, Amy Goodman, and the list goes on...
What do they all have in common? Zero scientific training, and no experience with the scientific method. So they sit there and pontificate from their polemical perches about how the rest of us rabble are too stupid to truly understand history, to understand their wisdom, and to truly appreciate how the world really works.
Nevermind that they will never deal with actual data, the enormous quantity of which proves beyond any reasonable doubt that those buildings were blown up on that fateful day. Nevermind that a peer reviewed scientific paper has been sitting out in the public arena for over 2 years proving the presence of high explosives, and to this day has gone unchallenged.
But Cockburn must be the worst. His rant on CounterPunch yesterday merits the idiot of the year award for anti-science. He is the crackpot who denies climate change is a real thing, and he might as well be in bed with right wing creationists when it comes to issues of science.
Robert, please stick to writing about current issues, and let us adults deal with the science of 911, and the conclusions it draws as to what happened that day.
The next step is for Fisk to be interviewed on Democracy Now, a la Juan Cole on Libya.
So very true. It's too bad Cockburn is such an idiot on this subject. I really like CounterPunch, and the fact that they publish articles that take Amy Goodman and Juan Cole to task. In the former case, for sitting idly by while a CIA officer is explaining his connections to Cole, and in the case of the latter, for being a champion of the murderous imperial war in Libya, aka "humanitarian intervention". Yeah, right.
I agree totally. As bad as Fisk is in his handwaving dismissals (and you can add Matt Tiaibi to the list of apoplectic leftist gatekepers), Cockburn's screed yesterday is the worst. His risible strawmen, and over-the-top hyperbole and ad homs, were maddingly irrelevant to any actual questions re 9/11 or reasonable suppositions based on plausible interpretation of available evidence. I was looking for a place to comment and list his various fallacies, but it seems he is so lacking in confidence to let his words be challenged, that there is no way, as CD here allows, to hold his feet to the fire. Fie on them all.
kryolux,
I agree. Cockburn early on had a bought and paid for nuclear scientist on his web site (Garcia) with some amazing bullshit about how pancaking floors at WTC could actually EQUAL free fall without demolitions required. It was breathtaking.
Fisk won't touch the "MONEY" motive for 9/11 with a ten foot pole. All the data and libraries of information he is all stressed out about point squarely to the MONEY motive.
The blogger doth protest too much, methinks.
I like CounterPunch. If Cockburn had the attitude that his time was better spent covering other issues, I might respect that, but he seems to be taunting anyone that realizes the official story is fraught with inconsistencies and improbabilities.
CP often posts articles by Paul Craig Roberts, but I bet his latest one on 9/11 will not make it. Heck, my last post referring to his 9/11 article got deleted here.
So, you're saying that saying Palestine was a unifying motive is unscientific?
Does that mean to imply that pretending it had nothing to do with it is scientific?
There is no such thing (well not quite yet) as scientific data on what is in the hearts of men, but I'm pretty sure pretending that you know what is in the hearts of others isn't scientific data either. So, maletesta1936, which science have you had training in that you understand scientific principles so well?
And testagrassa I assume is a nuclear physicist? What woodwork do you wacky conspiracy theorists crawl out of. I'm sure the Likud fascists were more than happy with the tower show, but to think that they or some element of the US Imperium (god, the incompetence) had anything to do with its staging is ridiculous.
I'm not one to defend Fisk, he can take care of himself, but even though getting into a mix with this crowd is like pissing into the wind, I thought it would be a little fun to get my two cents in. You guys should go back to contemplating quantum entanglement, it's a lot more practical and may prove a lot more challenging.
richsmith2
I strongly suggest that you read very carefully what Serious Citizens has to say on Sept. 4 at 9:24 am as he puts forth in the most compelling and persuasive terms why those gullible Americans who defend the government's official conspiracy theory as to what occurred on 9/11/01 are the ones, to borrow from your word, who are whacky.
We can add Noam Chomsky to that list. Cockburn finds an 'expert' who said that this conspiracy nuttery began back w the JFK assassination [if you notice most so-called 'progressive' critics of 9-11 Truthers {IE: Chomsky} also accept the 'official' Gov't version of JFK's lone nut killer theory]. In a sense they're right - the official explanations of the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK & Malcom X [blamed on 3 lone-nuts + 3 Black Muslims & that all there is to it] were NEVER sufficient for me- ESPECIALLY WHEN I DUG BELOW THE SURFACE & LOOKED AT THE EVIDENCE! Cockburn critiques 9-11 Truthers mainly based on 'pseudo-psychology' in order to declare that most / all so-called 'conspiracy-theorists' are a bit nutty &/or mis-led. YET- They seem to never psycho-analyze 'Coincidence Theorists' - especially so-called progressives who constantly criticize the Gov't &/or the power structure's policies at home &/or abroad, but then always seem to basically accept 'official' explanations for 'Deep Events' IE: the JFK, RFK, MLK Malcolm-X assassinations &/or 9-11 - Especially considering that they are more than just run-of-the-mill tragedies but have had far-ranging political & geo-political implications!..
Cockburn, like so many of his ilk [IE: Matt Taibbi] insist that the 9-11 Truthers must come up w all of the answers [before-hand] for their criticisms to be credible - thus getting into the arena speculation [& possible slander]. This is both dis-ingenious & a potential trap that wise 9-11 Truthers avoid. The only way to get all the answers is to have a REAL INVESTIGATION of all potential witnesses, co-conspirators & evidence!
Cockburn then uses both the controversially contentious [but real] issue of what did or didn't hit the Pentagon -&- then for extra effect throws in a basically conjured-up [straw-man] scenario of AA Flt 77 being diverted to Nebraska to meet Bush's Air-Force One at an air-base- where the passengers theoretically [according to him] were taken off & disposed of [that's the first time I ever heard that one before] just for him to ridicule. But what he doesn't deal w is the utterly preposterous scenario of Hani Hanjour - who was known to be a terrible pilot even for a single engine Cessna, flying a Boeing 757 jet airliner like a TOP-GUN Fighter PILOT - executing a 330* cork-screw turn from 7000-ft at 530-mi/hr & flying it at just 10-ft - 20-ft off the ground [or even less] to hit a bulls-eye into the ground floor of the Pentagon! And the side that was struck just happened to be under renovation- meaning it just happened to be the most heavily reinforced & most sparsely populated at that particular time [coincidence theory at work again] - especially when considering that the easiest target [for any pilot - even an experienced one] which would have done far more damage- would have been the Pentagon's roof - which is in 5 HUGE Sections [w each section = at-least 5 US Football Fields IN SIZE]!
When Cockburn does actually do some scientific analysis of actual evidence - HE [or at least his so-called 'expert'] DELIBERATELY MIS-STATES IT - IE: the construction & design of WTC 1 & 2 [& by implication WTC-7]! His 'expert' regurgitates the long dis-proven claim that WTC 1 & 2 were essentially 'hollow tubes' w the floor suspended between their outer walls. Thus this 'expert' disingenuously ignores the well known fact [by those who have studied this topic over the past 10yrs] that WTC 1 & 2 each had a grid of 47 MASSIVE BOX STEEL COLUMNS AT THEIR CORES which supported most of their loads - w the outer walls functioning in important YET Secondary roles relative to WTCs' 1 & 2 load support [ea box column was at their base +4ft wide & made from steel plates 4in thick]! And also the fact that WTC 1 & 2 were specifically designed to with-stand the impact of a Boeing 707 crashing into them! And WTC-7's construction was based on a more standard column layout & of course was NOT HIT BY AN AIRPLANE!
Then there's Matt Taibbi - In His debate w Prof David Ray Griffin concerning 9-11 he was quite the SMART-ASS -&- demanded that Prof Griffin had to provided all the answers to the 9-11 riddle in a neat little package. He also used the phony 'A conspiracy that large - somebody would have definitely talked' straw-man argument, which as Prof Griffin pointed out, is nothing but a form of circular reasoning & ignores actual historical cases of hi-level secrecy being maintained over long periods involving literally hundreds, thousands & even 10s of thousands of people [IE: The Manhattan Project, & the breaking of the German & Japanese 'secret' codes by US & UK intelligence all of which remained secret for the duration of WWII] - which disproves this oft used argument. Ironically Taibbi has since written a series on how Goldman Sachs & the Wall St Banksters defrauded the REAL Econ [IE: the people] of $TRILLIONS resulting in the current ECON CRASH - that is the very definition of a CONSPIRACY [which is what Goldman termed it in their rebuttal]! THUS it would seem that its not that Taibbi doesn't believe in hi-level, intricate & nefarious conspiracies- JUST NOT WHEN IT COMES TO 9-11 [PS: Ironically Taibbi writes for Rolling-Stone Magazine- which in 2007 did an expose' featuring St John Hunt -son of the infamous E Howard Hunt, who told how E Howard made a 'death-bed' admission of his role in JFK's assassination {both written & on tape} & how it involved key players in the highest levels of Gov't, military, intelligence & business communities]!
Nixakliel, good post. Chomsky has been gotten to by someone, i suspect, and not recently but after the JFK killing. Cockburn, possibly, too, although he is so dumb on other issues that I suspect his take on 9-11 reflects obtuseness and denial on his part rather than something more sinister. In any case as you adduce, he is very dishonest and insulting in his argumentation, which is fallacious. I would encourage readers to read Barry Zwicker's Towers of Deception, particularly his chapter on Chomsky and the left gatekeepers. Very interesting stuff in there, esp. on Chomsky.
Thank you, Robert Fisk. You remain one of the only international journalists willing to speak the truth.
"How many died on 9/11? Almost 3,000. How many died in the Iraq war? Who cares?"
We could say the same in Israel today -- each Israeli death is a tragedy, but we can ignore all Palestinian deaths. And in Afghanistan -- every American dies tragically and heroically at the hands of a terrorist, while each Aghan child murdered counts for nothing. And in Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan.
I have no issue with your sentiment regarding the tragedy that followed the events of 9-11, but sadly — as I greatly respect the man's reporting for it's powerful style and unflinching desire to tell the 'hard story' — I think in this case he really does more harm to 'the truth' of 9-11 than he does good.
Lies We Still Tell Ourselves about 9/11: "The hopeless mythology of CIA/Mossad culprits"
That's not telling "the hard story". That's giving into the same garbage as usual. Of course we know, if we mention the Mossad, the implication is that only anti-Semitic xenophobes and racist nuts would claim culpability of Israel when its was 'obviously' Islamic terrorists (let's not bring up the fact that the FBI even admitted it didn't really get the suspects right...Of the 19 alleged hijackers identified by the FBI, at least six turned up alive [and well] years after the attack).
Thing is, most truthers don't specifically point to the Mossad being at center stage in the events of 9-11. There seems to be a shared set of responsibilities among the entire set of involved nations: The US, UK, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Israel. So that's an intentional red-herring by Fisk, and I'm darned surprised by it. Here's yet another 'opposition gatekeeper' keeping the false narratives alive and well.
Spot on, Salusa, especially the last paragraph.
What is strange is that Fisk has elsewhere expressed some reserved skepticism about the official narrative of the 9/11 events. Why does he now throw that all out the window?
But Robert Fisk fails to speak the most important truth, which is that 9/11 was an inside job. Robert Fisk also repeats the lie that 19 arab hijackers perpetrated 9/11.
Yes! Look at how perfectly building #7 was imploded. Who died in that one? Do you know what was housed there - for 1 all the SEC files. There was a Documentary put out by the families of 9/11. I bought it off of "Democracy Now." At the end is a factual "time line" composed from the back pages of all the newspapers. That's an eye opener.
Robert Fisk notes the gullibility of so many Americans who still believe that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks of 9/11/01. But yet he apparently wants us to also believe that a very tall bearded man living in a cave thousands of miles away from the United States was also the mastermind who somehow plotted those hijackings on that fateful day.
Robert Fisk has done stellar work by speaking out and challenging those who are in power. The tragic thing is that he, like so many others, is so quick to condemn those who dare to question the official story that Americans have been told by the Bush administration concerning the mysterious events that took place on September 11, 2001.
Exactly!
And it's AT LEAST as much about oil, and geo-political hegemony, as it is, or may be about Israel's relationship to Palestine.
Doesn't Fisk also question the premise of global warming?
Sorry. He may have been a reliable voice for what was taking place in Lebanon and peripheral Middle Eastern nations, but his head is up his ass on this subject.
Tell it like it is SR!
I would argue the main motive was to ensure endless war and endless profits for the MIC.
Fisk says, "The murderers of 9/11 claimed to be Muslims. They came from a place called the Middle East." This is not a factual statement.
The 19 people that are blamed in the 'official story' of the events of 9/11 have never been charged with any crime. The 'official story' says they all died on that day but many of them are alive and well today and claim to have had no involvement with the destruction of the World Trade Center nor the deaths of the 3000 people who died in the collapse of those buildings. Osama bin Laden also said that he had no involvement with the destruction of the World Trade Center. He said that to kill innocent people is against the Muslim religion.
We need a real investigation, instead of a cover up, of what really happened on that day. The investigation should only deal with the science of the physical events that took place. After the facts are known, there will need to be another investigation to attempt to determine who was responsible for the events of 9/11. It is possible it was not 19 people with box cutters.
I appreciate and agree with most of what you say, however "We need a real investigation." Private investigations have been done. Your sentence begs those who are covering up to investigate their own complicity. The next step is trying and convicting the guilty and quite possibly the traitors behind this event. Shall we ask permission for this also? For those who took the oath it is high time to man up. It's not "their" responsibility anymore. We put our trust in "them" and they have proven themselves as incompetent or worse traitorous.
I'm sorry to inform all here that freedom is not free, and if anyone ever spoke the words "I, _____(insert your name here), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic," who do you think those enemies are? When do you think the time is to defend that constitution is? Who's responsibility is it, "theirs" or the one who spoke those words?
Actually, freedom IS free, which is why we don't have it.
Risk averse corporates like the guaranteed profits of war and the security state rather than have to deal with the pesky expenses and uncertanties of research and development and product inovation of a free market.
There is no easy money in freedom.
Indeed it's a true and significant fact that Bin Laden first denied any responsibility just after the attacks. Now what would've motivated him to make that statement had he truly been the mastermind given the enormous potential power granted to him by having authored such a successful operation?
He did not condemn any one in this article, he said he understood how and why "Millions" of americans do not believe the lies told about the Mass Murder on September 11th, or the lies shielding the present day US invasions for corporate imperialism. Perhaps, in his job, he has not been stridently honest in the past and has promoted plenty of propaganda, but he is pointing out one of the first concepts applied to understanding crimes: Motive- the corporate motive.
"The tragic thing is that he, like so many others, is so quick to condemn those who dare to question the official story that Americans have been told....."
It's fine to question it and I'm sure that FIsk would say the same. But when people convey certainty with regard to understandings of precisely what happened that day--understandings that often seem to involve preposterous leaps of faith and conjecture--they should probably expect not to be taken very seriously by anyone with marginally developed powers of critical analysis. Who knows just what happened that day? Not me, and I've perused all the same so called "evidence" that the denier crowd loves to cite.
You realize that there is an effort underway to push outrageous, anti-scientific hypotheses about what happened that day, right? Are you familiar with the Cass Sunstein proposal to infiltrate and discredit pro-911-Truth groups and discussions? (Read this: http://bit.ly/hhMSiF )
The perps of this crime need to discredit ANY legitimate investigations such as the rational scientific questions addressed by Dr. Niels Harrit and his team that found nano-thermite, a high explosive, in the dust from the WTC. By mixing ridiculous anti-scientific hypotheses (e.g. space beams or small nukes destroyed the towers) with serious scientific inquiry, it serves to perpetuate an image of "crazy" 911 truthers. Fortunately, that has largely failed, and a majority of people aren't buying the official story.
I highly recommend this trailer for the upcoming movie by Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsW4F95GEM8
Dionski:
You said, "But when people convey certainty with regard to understandings of precisely what happened that day--understandings that often seem to involve preposterous leaps of faith and conjecture.."
Do you realize how easily that comment can fit either side of this unfinished debate? Those of us who do not buy the official narrative certainly view its conjecture precisely under the terms you herewith described.
Right on, Sioux.
"I'm talking about the volumes, the libraries – nay, the very halls of literature – which the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001 have spawned. Many are spavined with pseudo-patriotism and self-regard, others rotten with the hopeless mythology of CIA/Mossad culprits, a few (from the Muslim world, alas) even referring to the killers as "boys", almost all avoiding the one thing which any cop looks for after a street crime: the motive."
Mr. Fisk, you are f*cking scum.
Funny how what you write just happens to coincide with the story that the "dancing Israelis" were trying to tell on that day, huh?
Gee, funny that the Mossad agents who were detained on the morning of 9/11 ALSO stated that they were Palestinians, huh?
Funny that you would write this article about how Palestine united all the "terrorists" right before the Palestinians go before the UN this month to push for statehood recognition.
This is "liberal" propaganda in support of fascism at its most clever and most vile, Mr. Fisk, and you are a disgrace to humanity.
Gee, but he was just pointing out that Palestine was really the motivating factor as far as 9/11 goes, huh?
Exactly, the f*cking propagandist.
Here's a video of Dr. Alan Sabrosky, US Marine Corps General talking about Israeli involvement in 9/11.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_Ffz0koJbI
Another article from Veteran's Today about to what extremes even places like Snopes.com have gone to "debunk" claims of Israeli involvement in 9/11.
Myth-Debunking Snopes Obscures Israel’s Role in 9/11
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/07/21/maidhc-o-cathail-myth-debunking-snopes-obscures-israel%E2%80%99s-role-in-911/
A good article for those not acquainted with Israeli involvement in 9/11 that was well-sourced.
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/fiveisraelis.html
Thanks for the link. This is the best cited discussion of this piece of the puzzle that I've come across.
Then you'll also enjoy knowing that at the Israeli International Security Academy, Israeli and other Western special forces members like to dress up in Arab garb and train.
Hmmm, now what good would that be for?
Probably just to get the "evildoers" I'm sure.
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/august192011/israel-ethnic-cleansing-tk.php