Down the road and up to the present, Phillip Zelikow has authored numerous documents in support of our government ¹s bellicose foreign policy. The arrogance of high collateral damage bombings are justified by the "security needs" that the commission ¹s report contributes to our nation ¹s understanding of how we ought go about relating to the other nations of the world. As the policy functions, "they hate our freedoms" translates to we can kill their civilians with impunity.
With the passage of time the world of academia has now had a chance to look at not only the specific investigation techniques of the matter, but the physics involved with the collapse of the Twin Towers. The supposition that the kerosene jet fuel that was supposed to have melted steel was the first and most obvious claim that struck the thousands of professionally trained physicists, metallurgists, and demolition engineers as a blatant distortion. The disparity between the temperature that jet fuel burns and steel melts at is about a thousand degrees Fahrenheit. The conditions to melt steel simply are not present, as made obvious by the photographs of people standing in the small gaps created by the plane ¹s impact. Though the heat is clearly not enough to melt the woman seen standing there, it has nonetheless been put forward as part of "history" that it melted key parts of the 240 perimeter beams and the 47 vertical beams. Despite the construction being deliberately designed to have the screen door resiliency wherein you can punch a hole somewhere and it will still be structurally functional, the commission ¹s explanation clings to the version that has the relevant political ideology attached. It ¹s enough to make an empiricist want to take a more reasoned approach.
The latest film now on the market supports the research for the lay observer. Tucked away in storage for five years, the film Eyewitness 9/11, comprised wholly of footage shot from a New Jersey dock, shows all the tell-tale signs of a controlled demolition. One can actually hear the explosions immediately before the buildings collapse, and see the puffs of smoke and horizontal contrails that the mainstream media has clearly been intimidated into ignoring. The evidence is even more revealing in the film Loose Change Edition 2, which can be downloaded free from Google. In this film, pinpoint flashes of light are enlarged for us to examine as debris is being propelled outwards. The film also interviews firefighters who heard the series of explosions immediately before each building begins its descent at virtually free-fall speed with all the exact seven characteristics that a demolition engineer can tell you comprises a purposeful pull.
In light of the commission ¹s lack of impartiality and independence, poor track record of examining basic details, and willingness to ignore key circumstances, it would seem prudent to ask for any evidence verifying their assertions. Besides whatever they have that could confirm their theories of steel melting and buildings falling, we are owed evidence that American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon. So far there has been no explanation of the picture taken immediately after the attack wherein no trace of a plane is evident. The hole clearly reveals itself to be much smaller than the wing-span of the plane that supposedly hit it. Remarkably, the commission ignores this, along with numerous other pieces of evidence that cast doubt on the official version of this attack. The only piece of evidence that was recovered was one small piece of airplane that had no singe marks on it, while the rest of the plane was apparently supposed to have vaporized completely. Pieces of turbines that are visible are clearly not from a 757. Security tapes from a hotel, and a gas station next door were promptly confiscated by the FBI; the content of these tapes, along with footage from the unknown number of cameras of the Pentagon itself, has not been approved for public viewing. We are deprived of seeing this evidence despite the fact that the tapes would prove conclusively the incident happened as reported by the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff immediately following the event.
This is only one example of evidence that clearly exists, could support the original official story, or the modified one that was put out several days later, or the one the commission came out with several years later. For reasons of national security and political expediency it is being withheld. When someone finally stands up on the Senate floor and asks for it to be produced we will be having a new era of an ongoing historical event.
On March 26, 2006 the mainstream news reported that survivors of New York City residents killed in the collapse were getting letters offering the tape of 911 emergency phone calls. They, along with the media, would be getting a release of just the operator side of the call. The reasoning for this specific distortion of information was unclear in the Headline News report. What was revealed was that the alarming need to edit information is now being reported by a news media that has ignored the abrupt clamp down on the flow of pertinent information following the events of 9/11. The dozens of accounts by FBI agents and translators, former Bush insiders, fire fighters, people who escaped the Twin Towers, and the abruptly fired UL employee who certified the steel used in the towers detail a multitude of distortions, omissions, intimidation, and blatant manipulation of specific facts and circumstances. Many of these stories have come out haltingly due to court-ordered gag orders. What attorney filed those gag orders and who exactly is paying his bill would be very useful to an actual investigation if you like going down rabbit holes. What ¹s down that hole is what half of America and most of the rest of the world who are ready for some real accountability want to know.
Mostly it comes in demands for censure and impeachment. While that seems like the natural and logical consequences of the choices our leaders have made, it really only scratches the surface when it comes to holding the individuals involved accountable for the crimes committed on that day and the cover-up perpetrated since. The frugality of the 9/11 commission ¹s effort, the shoddiness of the investigation, the calculated effort to ignore anything that does not fit into the official explanation is, as their survivors will tell you, an insult to the victims of that day. The entire manner that the events of that day were used as an opportunity for advancing this administration ¹s agenda brings into focus just what the neocon agenda has accomplished since the advent of our New Pearl Harbor.
The Project For the New American Century, an organization that includes Bush policy architects Paul Wolfowitz Donald Rumsfield, Jeb Bush, and Dick Cheney, reveals on their web site the rationale, the entire motivation, behind the acceptable collateral damage of the events of September eleventh. In discussing the increased defense spending and global domination that the Project strives for, the author admits the agenda "will be hard to realize absent a catalyzing event such as a new Pearl Harbor." To the average American it would seem incomprehensible that anyone, in their pursuit of more power than the competitors, would be willing to accept the trauma and loss of life to make things happen they way the members of the project feel that they must. However, history is replete with evidence that the leaders of this country have contrived a variety of situations to gain advantages in the pursuit of a rationale for domination. In this day and age one can google Operation Northwoods, The Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Kuwati incubator baby deception, the Spanish-American War, the Mexican-American War, the Kennedy assassination, and Pearl Harbor. Within seconds one can examine evidence of deceptive assertions that cost many lives while benefiting the Industrial-Military Complex and the Right wing of our leadership.
Immediately after the tragedy the Bush administration contacted General Wesley Clark and asked him to lend his support to the idea that Iraq was in some way connected with these deaths. Clark claimed on the show Meet The Press that he had been called on the afternoon of September 11 and urged to link Baghdad to the terror attacks. Clark said he would do so after examining the evidence, which was never presented to him. The Patriot Act, the War on Terror, and the international machinations that include the bombing of Afghanistan, the Iraqi war, and extraordinary rendition are but a few examples of what has been accomplished by the political fortunes harvested by this administration. Recent revelations that disputed funds for defense contractor Halliburton are indeed going to be "turned over" is but a glimpse of power wielded and fortune pursued by creating a political climate of fear and intimidation.
As anyone who has traveled internationally can tell you, the rest of the world views America as a self-interested entity willing to accept an inordinate amount of loss of human life in pursuit of our ends. This was made abundantly clear in Bush senior ¹s administration when we suddenly broke out our shiny new stealth bombers for their very first combat mission and razed ten square blocks of downtown Panama City in response to a service man ¹s wife being accosted by a Panamanian. It made perfect sense to our current President ¹s father and main role model; he was understandably angry, and the three thousand Panamanians killed and countless left homeless served his purpose to counter the wimp image. In today ¹s world, it ¹s the 100,000 plus Iraqi civilians who have died at the hands of American bombs, the abuses of Abu Ghraib, the depleted uranium shells that litter the desert landscape, that the rest of the world looks at and sees the truth of the American government ¹s intentions.
There are also relevant truths in the deaths of those whose lives ended as collateral damage on that day. It ¹s essential to the healing of deep divisions between the people of this country, of this world, that more than one investigation take place into the many contradictions in the official version of the events of 9/11/2001. If ever there was a need and opportunity to think global and act local, this is it.
There were numerous individuals killed from a variety of locales, each place with its own District Attorney. The individual DA ¹s have specific responsibilities to implement discovery processes, to ask questions where questions need to be asked about murdered citizens who resided within their jurisdiction. It will take a whole series of county prosecutors, acting on the evidence gathered by academics, supported by the work of individuals and grass root groups to bring out the truth. But if not us, then who?
The responsibility for these tragedies is entirely in our hands. It is "We" who did this, and questioning the official version of these events is a civic duty that we all must bear as individuals. With a thorough examination of our actions we can begin to address the circumstance that has catalyzed the abrupt curtailing of civil liberties, the sharpest ever increase in defense spending, and the largest wholesale change in perceptions of ourselves and others since the media started paying attention.
Joseph Shermis has published The Steelhead Special, a Working Class Cultural & Literary Review, since 1991. He lives on the northcoast of California with good people and pleasant animals, and usually has at least three part time jobs and two community activist projects going at any given time. He does free lance editing and curriculum writing for money, writes editorials and guest columns for love. He is in the process of forming a group with others called Eureka 9/11 Moment.
steelie@asis.com
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