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Printer-Friendly ModeHistory of 9/11 remains incomplete
September 17, 2007 —
While I was driving to school on Sept. 11, I saw some people holding signs on the corner of Bay and Tittabawassee. I figured they were war protestors, which I've seen on that corner before. It wasn't until closer inspection - one guy ran up to my car and started waving a sign - that I realized that these people were 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Their signs encouraged people to look up "Building 7" on Google and visit the Web site infowars.com. Another sign read "9/11 was an inside job."
A few years ago, I was pretty big into conspiracy theories, especially the theories behind the assassinations of JFK and his brother, Robert. But I also read up on 9/11, and so I was familiar with what the protestors were getting at: World Trade Center Building 7 was not hit by a plane, nor did it suffer any serious structural damage as a result of the collapse of WTC buildings 1 and 2 (the Twin Towers). Yet, half a day after the initial attacks, WTC 7 collapsed neatly into its own footprint.
Videos of the collapse are available all over the Internet. 911research.wtc7.net is one of the premier conspiracy sites, and it has lots of videos of the attacks and the collapse, so if you haven't seen or even heard of WTC 7, it's certainly worth a look. You will be surprised, and perhaps even shocked, at what you find. I certainly was. The video of WTC 7's collapse looks eerily like a controlled demolition one might see on late-night Discovery Channel shows about big explosions. It sent my head into a tailspin.
I eventually grew tired of conspiracy theories, including those explaining 9/11. But that's not to say I totally forgot everything I read, which included the 9/11 Commission's report, one of the worst pieces of literature ever published. Re-reading Watership Down could tell you more about 9/11 than that book. If the report did anything at all, it proved that in times of crisis, it is more pertinent to erect monuments than to perform serious analysis; to react emotionally and brush aside difficult questions.
The 9/11 Commission's report is one of a number of things that keeps those protestors on the corners whenever Sept. 11 rolls around. Another is the mainstream media's embargo on anything even remotely suggesting that 9/11 was not entirely the work of al-Qaeda.
It seems that every episode of Crossfire that I see is about the same set of two or three hot-button issues that rotate every two weeks or so. Not once have I ever seen a serious debate in broadcast or print media that looks critically at the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission. I mean, once in a while, some Q-list celebrity will go on the record saying elements of the U.S. government allowed 9/11 to happen. But for as many pissing contests that take place concerning the Iraq war, it's surprising, and depressing, that there aren't more arguments over the events the served as the war's pretext. It's basically taboo.
Also shunned in the light of Iraq are arguments that suggest that a foreign state was at all responsible for 9/11. Now, one will occasionally see an article in a sub-sub-sub-mainstream report suggesting that bin Laden had some stately help (Iran pops up here and there, in various ways). But for the most part, if any popular writers have anything resembling an opinion on the matter, they've held it close to their hearts. Such is the media's fear of anything contradicting the story it's reported for years and opening up a billion-ton can of worms.
But like I said, I'm quite sick of conspiracy theories, and have developed decidedly non-conspiratorial conclusions as to what happened on 9/11. So I gave those protestors a menacing look as I drove past them. But I understand why they were there. Six years after the fact, the truth is still muddled behind deceit, disinformation, idiocy, and contradictory stories that the government and media have made no effort to analyze. The 9/11 Commission Report is functioning in much the same way the Zapruder film works: the truth is there, but hidden from plain view. It is a disservice to the Republic that such a pivotal moment in American history remains shrouded to this day.