Rosebud #2
Over 12,000 hits to this web site since it went up this month, July, but unfortunately I can’t claim to be the draw. I have a piece in the current, August, issue of Vanity Fair on the 9/11 documentary Loose Change, and I think at least some of the people who are interested in 9/11 conspiracy theories in general must be winding up here. 42% of Americans now believe the U.S. government “concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence that contradicts their official explanation of the September 11th attacks,” and that “there has been a cover-up,” according to a May, 2006, Zogby poll. I’m happy to share what I know. And kudos again to Vanity Fair for having the journalistic integrity to print something fair about questions around the “official story” of 9/11.
I learned a lot from reading Nafeez Mosadddeq Ahmed’s books, The War On Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001 and The War On Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism; David Ray Griffin’s The New Pearl Harbor and The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions; and, more on background, Craig Unger’s House of Bush, House of Saud and John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (all available at www.amazon.com). There are a number of good web sites, including www.911truth.org and www.911blogger.com. I recently watched 9/11 Eyewitness (on Google Video); some of the footage in it is startling. Director Richard Siegal filmed the September 11 attack and the collapse of the Towers from across the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey, from where you can clearly hear and see explosions going off in the buildings. The film also delivers a thorough, scientific case for a controlled demolition of the Towers and Building 7.
People have asked me, how did you get into all this? I first encountered questioners of the government’s official story (I don’t like “9/11 Truthers,” which sounds like you’ve just been to the dentist) at a conference headed by Nick Levis in San Francisco in early 2004. I was there to cover a conference of activists gearing up for the Republican National Convention, at Berkeley; but all they wanted to talk about was protest’s “image” and "marketing protest” (rather than the real issues facing our country, say) and I became quite bored. I saw a flyer for a “9/11 Truth” conference, and that sounded like a much more interesting story.
Like others who’d heard Colin Powell’s presentation to the U.N. Security Council on the case against Iraq, in February, 2003, I’d initially believed the government’s story about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. It scared the hell out of me; I was a New Yorker and a single mother at the time. I’d even supported the invasion of Iraq, something which now fills me with revulsion and an uneasiness about my own passivity in the face of government lying. In 2005, Powell called that U.N. speech “a blot” on his record, admitting that he had actually "never seen evidence to suggest" a connection between September 11 and Sadaam Hussein’s regime. Tell that to the mothers of the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of Iraqi children who have been injured, maimed or killed in this war.
Back to San Francisco, 2004: I took the bus back over the bridge from Berkeley, and for two days sat and listened to presentations by researchers, professors, activists, foreign journalists, analyzing and examining the government’s official story of 9/11, which it had never even occurred to me to do. I was most impressed by the detailed account given by former LAPD detective and 9/11 truth activist Mike Ruppert (author of Crossing the Rubicon) on the failure of the U.S. air defense on September 11. The government’s claim that it “just messed up” (to paraphrase) just didn’t add up, when you actually looked at the data from NORAD and the FAA, and considered the numerous war games going on, on that day. (The U.S. military was conducting a number of war games on 9/11—some of which simulated an air attack on the United States—which took fighter jets away from their posts and confused air traffic controllers.)
Any group of “9/11 Truthers” is not without the type of conspiracy loonies that the mainstream media likes to depict as the only questioners of the official story (erroneously, considering that 42% of Americans represents some 70 million people). So here I was listening to this stuff, looking around at some of these people, and I started to feel kind of funny, like I had to get some air.
By the time I got back to my hotel room I was feeling genuinely ill. I think it was a physical manifestation of dread—a dreadache. What if our government had been complicit in the attacks? It was just too horrible to contemplate—which is why I think so many people refuse to even consider it. I called an editor friend of mine in New York to tell him what I’d been learning; but he just laughed and said, “Yeah, meet ya in Roswell.”
I lay down and turned the TV on, and there was President Bush peeking under couches and beds in the White House, “looking for weapons of mass destruction,” to polite laughter, a few muffled gasps. It was a video for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. I wonder if the president would find it so easy to be amusing if Jenna or Barbara Bush were in the military now and stationed in Iraq.
I went into the bathroom and hurled.
I learned a lot from reading Nafeez Mosadddeq Ahmed’s books, The War On Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001 and The War On Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism; David Ray Griffin’s The New Pearl Harbor and The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions; and, more on background, Craig Unger’s House of Bush, House of Saud and John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (all available at www.amazon.com). There are a number of good web sites, including www.911truth.org and www.911blogger.com. I recently watched 9/11 Eyewitness (on Google Video); some of the footage in it is startling. Director Richard Siegal filmed the September 11 attack and the collapse of the Towers from across the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey, from where you can clearly hear and see explosions going off in the buildings. The film also delivers a thorough, scientific case for a controlled demolition of the Towers and Building 7.
People have asked me, how did you get into all this? I first encountered questioners of the government’s official story (I don’t like “9/11 Truthers,” which sounds like you’ve just been to the dentist) at a conference headed by Nick Levis in San Francisco in early 2004. I was there to cover a conference of activists gearing up for the Republican National Convention, at Berkeley; but all they wanted to talk about was protest’s “image” and "marketing protest” (rather than the real issues facing our country, say) and I became quite bored. I saw a flyer for a “9/11 Truth” conference, and that sounded like a much more interesting story.
Like others who’d heard Colin Powell’s presentation to the U.N. Security Council on the case against Iraq, in February, 2003, I’d initially believed the government’s story about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. It scared the hell out of me; I was a New Yorker and a single mother at the time. I’d even supported the invasion of Iraq, something which now fills me with revulsion and an uneasiness about my own passivity in the face of government lying. In 2005, Powell called that U.N. speech “a blot” on his record, admitting that he had actually "never seen evidence to suggest" a connection between September 11 and Sadaam Hussein’s regime. Tell that to the mothers of the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of Iraqi children who have been injured, maimed or killed in this war.
Back to San Francisco, 2004: I took the bus back over the bridge from Berkeley, and for two days sat and listened to presentations by researchers, professors, activists, foreign journalists, analyzing and examining the government’s official story of 9/11, which it had never even occurred to me to do. I was most impressed by the detailed account given by former LAPD detective and 9/11 truth activist Mike Ruppert (author of Crossing the Rubicon) on the failure of the U.S. air defense on September 11. The government’s claim that it “just messed up” (to paraphrase) just didn’t add up, when you actually looked at the data from NORAD and the FAA, and considered the numerous war games going on, on that day. (The U.S. military was conducting a number of war games on 9/11—some of which simulated an air attack on the United States—which took fighter jets away from their posts and confused air traffic controllers.)
Any group of “9/11 Truthers” is not without the type of conspiracy loonies that the mainstream media likes to depict as the only questioners of the official story (erroneously, considering that 42% of Americans represents some 70 million people). So here I was listening to this stuff, looking around at some of these people, and I started to feel kind of funny, like I had to get some air.
By the time I got back to my hotel room I was feeling genuinely ill. I think it was a physical manifestation of dread—a dreadache. What if our government had been complicit in the attacks? It was just too horrible to contemplate—which is why I think so many people refuse to even consider it. I called an editor friend of mine in New York to tell him what I’d been learning; but he just laughed and said, “Yeah, meet ya in Roswell.”
I lay down and turned the TV on, and there was President Bush peeking under couches and beds in the White House, “looking for weapons of mass destruction,” to polite laughter, a few muffled gasps. It was a video for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. I wonder if the president would find it so easy to be amusing if Jenna or Barbara Bush were in the military now and stationed in Iraq.
I went into the bathroom and hurled.
posted by NancyJo at 10:36 AM
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