::::::::
In another discussion here on opednews.com someone wrote, "I said that having another investigation of 9/11 was a minor issue compared to restoring checks and balances in our government."I'm reprinting my response as a diary because I think it is important:
But it was 9/11 that "changed everything." If not for 9/11, most Democrats might not have voted for the PATRIOT Act without even bothering to read it first, and might not have voted for the illegal, unjustified Iraq war. If not for 9/11 Bush would not have had sufficient popularity and Congressional support to push through his agenda of eliminating checks and balances in government. Bush got everything he wanted by pointing to 9/11 and saying that because of 9/11 everything he was doing was necessary, and that anyone who didn't agree was supporting the terrorists.
Since then the FBI has stated clearly that they have no hard evidence tying bin Laden to 9/11, and Bush himself has said that there is no evidence connecting Iraq to 9/11. There are still a lot of people who believe the government's conspiracy theory that 19 lone nuts with boxcutters just coincidentally happened to hijack four airplanes at a time when our air defenses were busy elsewhere for two hours, and that the laws of physics were suspended so that for the first and only time in history, airplanes and fires could cause steel skyscrapers to collapse with the precision and speed of controlled demolition. But even they haven't explained why that would justify the PATRIOT Acts or the Iraq war.
A new, full, impartial investigation would investigate why Building 7, which was not hit by a plane at all, fell as quickly and completely as WTC 1 and 2. The whitewash investigation doesn't even mention Building 7. If a large building falls and the investigation ignores it, did it really fall at all? A new, full, impartial investigation might not allow Bush and Cheney to testify secretly, together instead of singly, and while not under oath as all other witnesses were. A new, full, impartial investigation might investigate whose stock market plays indicated foreknowledge of 9/11 and how they had known. It might investigate why warnings were ignored. And much, much more.
So if you want to restore checks and balances in government, you should take a hard look at how they were lost, and who was behind it. Pakistani President Musharraf claims that he only funded the terrorists because the United States threatened to bomb Pakistan if he didn't. Is that true? Is it a lie? We know he sent money to Mohammad Atta. Where did that money come from? Why didn't the whitewash investigation bother to trace the money trail?
9/11 was the justification that Bush gave for removing checks and balances from our government. He said that he needed more power to fight the terrorists. So we need to know why he blocked any investigation for over a year. It only took 8 days after Pearl Harbor for an investigation to be opened, and it was wartime, so what was the difference? We need to know why he withheld portions of the investigation that involved the Saudis, particularly since his family has such close ties to the bin Laden family.
In other words, we need to know if 9/11, which was the reason Bush gave for removing checks and balances from our government, was initiated and carried out by terrorists, specifically those Al Quedah terrorists under bin Laden who had been formed, armed, and trained by the U.S. to fight the Russians in Afghanistan, for purposes of their own, or because Bush or others in his administration had ordered them to do so to facilitate his ability to remove checks and balances from our government.
Some have said that they did it to get Bush to remove U.S. troops from Saudi soil. Since Bush did comply with their demands and remove U.S. troops from Saudi soil, was he merely giving in to terrorists, or was that the quid pro quo he had promised them if they attacked the WTC so that he could remove checks and balances from our government?
Maybe you think it is a minor issue, but many people really want to know.
