Tarpley Part I

His first chapter is mostly a love letter to the 9-11 Denial Movement, but as usual with the Deniers we find that his objective is not about 9-11 but something else:



Get on board the 9-11 Denial train, because 9-11 Denial will end the Republicans, once and for all!

But of course, hoping to be on the winning side of the Democrats, Tarpley can't resist poking hardest at two fellows that usually get a pass from the 9-11 kooks: Richard Clarke and George Tenet. But since Clarke was around in the Clinton Administration, he comes in for some special scorn:



Update: A commenter claimed that I said here that Tarpley was catering to the Democrats. To clarify, what I meant is that Tarpley sees 9-11 Denial resulting in the destruction of the Republicans, and that would allow the Democratic party to split in two segments--the Lieberman Democrats and the Kennedy Democrats. Since Tarpley finds "there is hope" that the split will go "in a progressive direction", I assume that he aligns himself more with the Kennedy faction, and thus he criticizes moderates.

Tarpley's point here seems to be that these guys convinced the media that 9-11 was a Muslim job.

Tarpley does come down firm on the number of 9-11 hijackers who are still alive: 7. Of course, given that he appears to buy into the "patsy" theory of the hijackers it's hard to see what he buys with this, other than the usual chance for his readers to say, "Woo!"

We get a whole section on Bush's supposed lying. Of course this is the usual "if he would lie about A, then why not about B? Non-evidence in other words.

Then we get the bit about the "Colin Powell promised us a White Paper!" Like these folks would be satisified with a report. We've seen how this goes over. But of course the fact that Powell's State Department did not prepare one after all "proves" that 9-11 was an inside job.

An aside here. Tarpley does not do a very good job of assembling his arguments. His point with this whole chapter seems to be that the 9-11 story was sold by the administration and the press. So why not say that and then present your case. Instead this almost reads like settling old scores:



Let me say here that although my politics are Republican, the notion that a magazine like the Nation, which is fairly hard left, is helping out the Bush Administration is ... well, nutty. It sort of defines fringe, like when my conservative friends insist that Bush is involved in some plot to turn the country over to Mexico.

But there is a hero in this story according to Tarpley, and you are probably not going to believe who it is:



Of course, Tarpley and Torricelli are wrong here; New Jersey did not suffer the most victims of any state; New York had 1747 victims compared to the Garden State's 697. You can guess where Tarpley goes with this; that Torricelli was forced out of his reelection run in 2002 not because he accepted expensive "gifts" from a campaign but because the "inside jobbers" needed him out of the way.

Tarpley follows with a recital of a bunch of foreigners who suspect 9-11 was a US operation. Interesting, but hardly evidence.

General comments: Tarpley doesn't organize his book very well; it flits from place to place with no apparent rhyme or reason. He could also have benefited from a good editor; for starters it's Bob Kerrey, not Bob Kerry.