Academics are far from unanimous that only kooks and misguided ideologues suspect the government is covering up the truth about 9/11.
One example of a professional who doubts the government story is Richard A. Falk, a UN human rights official.
"Any close student of 9/11 is aware of the many serious discrepancies between the official version of what took place and the actual happenings of that fateful day in 2001," wrote Falk, the UN's human rights rapporteur in Israeli-occupied territories.
The recently retired Princeton University international law professor argued that it is "not paranoid" to "assume that established elites of the American government structure have something to hide, and much to explain."
Falk's article, which appeared Nov. 9, 2008 in a British journal, took aim at the fact that the presidential candidates avoided discussion of these matters. Please see http://www.journal-online.co.uk/article/5056-911-more-than-meets-the-eye. Or Google: Richard Falk, 9/11.
Falk, who is a member of the editorial board of the left-leaning Nation, was, however, somewhat critical of government antagonists, saying that "what has not been established by the '9/11 Truth Movement' is a convincing counter-narrative -- that is, an alternate version of the events that clears up to what degree, if at all, the attacks resulted from incompetence, deliberate inaction and outright complicity."
Comment: There is ample evidence of "outright complicity." However, it is quite difficult for honest observers, lacking the power of subpoena, to shake out a truthful account of all covert actions related to the attacks.
Christmas jet attack's 9/11 echoes
There are many chilling echoes of the attacks of 9/11 in the Yuletide terror attempt.
Recriminations are flying, and we have the same failure to connect dots. Now consider, suppose the jet downing had succeeded? The hysteria would have been so great that Obama would have been forced into draconian measures that enhanced the control of those secret cliques Falk was talking about.
Yes, the CIA is taking a lot of heat right now. But, had the attack succeeded, perhaps the heat would have been worthwhile. After all, the CIA managed very well with political damage control following the 9/11 attacks (and also following John Kennedy's assassination).
Though I can't at this point say that we have grounds to suspect an inside job, I would say that there are disconcerting similarities with a previous inside job.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Why does Shermer believe weird things?
Because al Qaeda claimed credit for the Christmas airline bombing attempt, therefore the U.S. government is innocent of involvement in orchestrating the events of 9/11.
This is the reasoning of Skeptic Michael Shermer, according to a Dec. 28 post at TrueSlant.
Evidently the Skeptic missed his basic logic class at university.
Well, actually, he didn't quite use strict logic. He deployed the implication arrow rather loosely, in the manner typical of a professional propagandist. Maybe he should write a column for the New York Post, or appear as a commentator on Fox News.
There are very few critics of the official 9/11 tale who claim that al Qaeda is not a terrorist group anxious to inflict spectacular casualties on Americans. The point is that the scientific evidence fails to corroborate the government story about what occurred on Sept. 11, 2001.
Nevertheless, we can anticipate that there will be a barrage of this sort of junk reasoning aimed at drowning out the inconvenient truths about what happened, and did not happen, on 9/11.
And note the contrast between this most recent al Qaeda attack -- if that's what it really was -- and the attacks of 9/11. In the first case, we have a highly coordinated, professional paramilitary operation; in the latter case, we have an attack at about the level of sophistication al Qaeda demonstrated before and after 9/11.
If Shermer is not a professional disinformation agent, then, alas, he is a scientist whose reasoning powers have been clouded by hysterical, irrational thinking.
This is the reasoning of Skeptic Michael Shermer, according to a Dec. 28 post at TrueSlant.
Evidently the Skeptic missed his basic logic class at university.
Well, actually, he didn't quite use strict logic. He deployed the implication arrow rather loosely, in the manner typical of a professional propagandist. Maybe he should write a column for the New York Post, or appear as a commentator on Fox News.
There are very few critics of the official 9/11 tale who claim that al Qaeda is not a terrorist group anxious to inflict spectacular casualties on Americans. The point is that the scientific evidence fails to corroborate the government story about what occurred on Sept. 11, 2001.
Nevertheless, we can anticipate that there will be a barrage of this sort of junk reasoning aimed at drowning out the inconvenient truths about what happened, and did not happen, on 9/11.
And note the contrast between this most recent al Qaeda attack -- if that's what it really was -- and the attacks of 9/11. In the first case, we have a highly coordinated, professional paramilitary operation; in the latter case, we have an attack at about the level of sophistication al Qaeda demonstrated before and after 9/11.
If Shermer is not a professional disinformation agent, then, alas, he is a scientist whose reasoning powers have been clouded by hysterical, irrational thinking.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
What Bush 'knew' and when he 'knew' it
Within hours of the 9/11 attacks, the White House "knew" without a doubt that al Qaeda had carried them out, the former British envoy to the United States has testified.
Christopher Meyer, the former ambassador, told of a conversation with National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice. "She said, well, there's no doubt it's -- this has been an al Qaeda operation."
The disclosure to Britain's Iraq war inquiry makes one wonder how the White House could have been so certain so rapidly. Perhaps the FBI had by then found the luggage left on a connecting flight that, at first sight, seemed to implicate al Qaeda, but that, on further reflection, looked planted. (See my article The worst of Hearst which can be reached via the links in the sidebar.)
It seems quite suspicious that the White House was dead certain that al Qaeda had pulled off the attacks so soon after they occurred. How were top officials already so sure that there was no chicanery going on? After all, it's a given that cloak-and-dagger units are proficient at throwing suspicion onto others.
And to compound things, Meyer added that the White House was already seeing a link between the attacks and Saddam Hussein. "But at the end of the conversation, it's: we are just looking to see whether there could possibly be any connection with Saddam Hussein. And that was the very first time -- on the day itself -- that I heard the name of the Iraqi leader mentioned in the context of -- of 9/11."
(Gleaned from a Judy Woodruff report on PBS's Newshour.)
A top aide to Prime Minister Tony Blair then confirmed that the White House was pushing to link the attacks to Hussein very soon after Sept. 11.
David Manning, Blair's foreign policy adviser in 2001, testified that, in a Sept. 14 conversation with Blair, President Bush "said that there might be evidence that there was some connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda."
Manning added, "The prime minister's response to this was that the evidence would have to be very compelling to justify taking any action against Iraq."
(Gleaned from an Agence France Presse report.)
A "link" of sorts eventually surfaced when military anthrax was mailed to journalists and politicians. The White House seized on the anthrax attack to imply a link to Saddam, who was suspected of developing military grade anthrax. That pattern of inuendo was sustained even after it was learned that the anthrax was linked to the Pentagon.
We see that:
1. The White House was immediately interested in exploiting the attacks of 9/11 to further its agenda against Hussein, but that the British were not persuaded there was much to the suspicion. Others have also disclosed that the in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the White House decided to "get" Saddam. If the White House wasn't overly concerned with the truth at that point, does this not suggest that the White House was behaving as if it had advance knowledge?
2. Blair knew that the White House favored military action against Iraq based on unsubstantiated inferences. Yet, supposedly he accepted the White House's eventual theory that Iraq was sitting on a dangerous complex of WMD horror weapons. In other words, didn't Blair realize that the White House was determined to launch a war no matter what and that, perhaps, he should have been chary of being dragged along?
Christopher Meyer, the former ambassador, told of a conversation with National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice. "She said, well, there's no doubt it's -- this has been an al Qaeda operation."
The disclosure to Britain's Iraq war inquiry makes one wonder how the White House could have been so certain so rapidly. Perhaps the FBI had by then found the luggage left on a connecting flight that, at first sight, seemed to implicate al Qaeda, but that, on further reflection, looked planted. (See my article The worst of Hearst which can be reached via the links in the sidebar.)
It seems quite suspicious that the White House was dead certain that al Qaeda had pulled off the attacks so soon after they occurred. How were top officials already so sure that there was no chicanery going on? After all, it's a given that cloak-and-dagger units are proficient at throwing suspicion onto others.
And to compound things, Meyer added that the White House was already seeing a link between the attacks and Saddam Hussein. "But at the end of the conversation, it's: we are just looking to see whether there could possibly be any connection with Saddam Hussein. And that was the very first time -- on the day itself -- that I heard the name of the Iraqi leader mentioned in the context of -- of 9/11."
(Gleaned from a Judy Woodruff report on PBS's Newshour.)
A top aide to Prime Minister Tony Blair then confirmed that the White House was pushing to link the attacks to Hussein very soon after Sept. 11.
David Manning, Blair's foreign policy adviser in 2001, testified that, in a Sept. 14 conversation with Blair, President Bush "said that there might be evidence that there was some connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda."
Manning added, "The prime minister's response to this was that the evidence would have to be very compelling to justify taking any action against Iraq."
(Gleaned from an Agence France Presse report.)
A "link" of sorts eventually surfaced when military anthrax was mailed to journalists and politicians. The White House seized on the anthrax attack to imply a link to Saddam, who was suspected of developing military grade anthrax. That pattern of inuendo was sustained even after it was learned that the anthrax was linked to the Pentagon.
We see that:
1. The White House was immediately interested in exploiting the attacks of 9/11 to further its agenda against Hussein, but that the British were not persuaded there was much to the suspicion. Others have also disclosed that the in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the White House decided to "get" Saddam. If the White House wasn't overly concerned with the truth at that point, does this not suggest that the White House was behaving as if it had advance knowledge?
2. Blair knew that the White House favored military action against Iraq based on unsubstantiated inferences. Yet, supposedly he accepted the White House's eventual theory that Iraq was sitting on a dangerous complex of WMD horror weapons. In other words, didn't Blair realize that the White House was determined to launch a war no matter what and that, perhaps, he should have been chary of being dragged along?
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