A New 9/11 Commission: Defining Amnesty

Every country seems to have its Velvet Revolution sometime, and, it seems, we may go through ours.  The question I have posed in past articles and discussions is: If you believe 911 was an inside job, and you believe that in order to get at the truth, it may be necessary to grant officers in the military and in the civilian branches like the CIA some sort of immunity, that is, full or partial amnesty for their role or knowledge of the events, how do you determine who gets what?

Surely someone who knew he would be killing innocent civilians merits different consideration than one who did not.  Some may have been following orders which they felt uneasy obeying, sensing that something was amiss.  Some may have felt that the consequences of not following questionable orders would be severe.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but during the Cold War it required two men to simultaneously push their own button in the command bunker to launch a nuclear warhead, a safety measure against one nut flipping out.  Each man's order came from a different officer, an assurance that this was a command decision.  But to be equally safe from enlisted men who understood better than their superiors that this would be the end of humanity, a measure was in place to enforce the pushing of both buttons.  Each man in the bunker had a sidearm, and if one of you refused to sign your name to the Apocalypse, the other man had orders to shoot you.  Communications to the outside world were cut off so you had no way of knowing if your whole family was already dead in a nuclear strike.   Leave it to West Point to think of everything.

Ralph Lopez is the author of "Truth in the Age of Bushism."