OpEdNews - Page 3 of Article: The 9/11 Conspiracy: A Skeptic's View

What Does it all Mean?

How then are we to explain the Bush Administration inaction before 9/11, and its willingness to take full advantage of this "new Pearl Harbor? " I don 't know, but that doesn 't keep me from speculating. So here 's my hunch and it 's only a hunch which I am willing to revise or abandon if and when more evidence appears. The Busheviks were forewarned ( "Bin Laden determined to strike in the US "), but they expected attacks on the scale of the USS Cole and the African embassies: perhaps a few dozen casualties -- "acceptable.". They did not take countermeasures because they saw a strategic advantage in such a "mini-Pearl Harbor. " For such a purpose, the attack on The Pentagon would suffice. They did not expect the destruction of the World Trade Center. However, after 9/11 the die was cast, and so they eagerly launched their "the war on terror, along with the policy outrages that were to follow: the USA PATRIOT ACT, Abu Ghraib, Gitmo. The Iraq War, we now know from Richard Clarke and the Downing Street memos, was on the drawing boards long before 9/11, awaiting just such an event to set it in motion.

All that is little more than a guess. But we can arrive at some more substantial conclusions from our unresolved examination of the 9/11 attacks.

First of all, it is clear that the 9/11 Commission is a travesty. Too many phenomena are unexplained. The evidence must be revisited and validated, and the critics ' anomalies explained. And this must be done fearlessly and independently of any political biases or agendas.

Second, the critics of the official version should, as much as possible, get their facts straight, whereupon they must then cease presenting falsehoods as evidence; e.g., that the debris was shipped immediately, uninspected, to Asia; that the the OV assumes and claims that steel melted; that no physical evidence of the plane was found at the Pentagon, etc.

Third: there is no shame in suspending belief -- i.e., in being skeptical. Conversely, it is shameful to jump to a conclusion and a conviction on insufficient and conflicting evidence. Acceptance of the official version, or conversely of the conspiracy theory, are not our only alternatives. Both views are vulnerable and leave many crucial questions unanswered. Far better that we admit to ourselves and tell the world that we simply do not know. Suspension of belief is not a conspicuously American trait. But it is a stock-in-trade of honest scholars and scientists. And it is spur to further investigation, which is most assuredly called for in this case.

Finally, partisan passions should not get in the way of a rational assessment of the evidence. Personally, my web publications testify that I yield to no one in my contempt for Bush and his crime syndicate. I would like as much as anyone to see these crimes pinned on Bush, Inc. But the evidence (however weak) is what it is.

What happened on 9/11? Who is responsible? The questions remain open even as they remain urgent. The American people deserve answers, and more immediately, competent and sustained investigation leading to these answers.

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