MyDD Posts 9-11 Fruitcake Diary

I suppose the rules aren't as stringent over there as they are over at Kos. It's Joel Hirschorn, who's a newly minted nutbar, having only recently joined Richard Gage's crew.

The 9/11 truth movement is stronger than ever, though it is generally derided by politicians and ignored by the mainstream media. It is fueled by people passionate about alternative explanations to the official 9/11 story. Understandable, considering that the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission admitted: "We were set up to fail."

Typical retarded Troofer; apparently he can't be bothered to actually read the book by Kean and Hamilton, in which they say that despite being set up to fail, they actually succeeded. I can understand while Joel doesn't crack the book, but does he really think nobody else will?

In 2006 Time magazine said: "The population of [the 9/11 truth movement] is larger than you might think. A Scripps-Howard poll of 1,010 adults last month found that 36% of Americans consider it `very likely' or `somewhat likely' that government officials either allowed the attacks to be carried out or carried out the attacks themselves. Thirty-six percent adds up to a lot of people. This is not a fringe phenomenon. It is a mainstream political reality."

No, it's a fringe phenomenon, as anybody who watches these idiots recognizes pretty quickly. If it were really something like 36% they'd get tens of thousands to their rallies. As we discussed only a couple weeks ago, the Zogby poll commissioned by 911Truth.org revealed that only 4.6% of the population is MIHOP. That number seems about right. Joel mentions that poll, but like all the kooks, fails to mention that particular poll result.

This year Zogby found that 31 perecent of likely voters do not buy the official 9/11 story [72 percent for ages 18 to 24 and nearly 60 percent for Hispanics and singles]; 51 percent still await a congressional investigation of Bush's and Cheney's actions before, during and after the 9/11 attacks [88 percent for ages 18 to 24 and 77 percent for Hispanics and singles]; and 67% fault the 9/11 Commission for not investigating the anomalous and still unexplained collapse of World Trade Center building 7.

It's disappointing to see the 9-11 fruitcakes not getting the scorn they deserve from a major liberal blog like MyDD.

Join Your Local 9-11 Denial Club and Meet People Like These!

I can't understand why this movement isn't more popular!

I Don't Know Art....

But I know what I like. And this sort of stuff (warning: page will take awhile to load) ain't it:



A conservative in San Francisco spends his Fourth of July at an anti-American gallery of lunacy. There are two separate examples of 9-11 Denial posters there; the other one comments on how some senior Mossad agents warned us in August 2001 of a cell of 200 terrorists, including four of the 9-11 hijackers, were planning an attack.

The Insanity Is Spreading

As I have commented in the past, the statement by Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats that impeachment is off the table is making 9-11 Denial more attractive to the far Left who are slavering for the end of the Bush regime. Here's an obviously frustrated Left-Winger indulging herself in a little 9-11 tinfoil hattery:

Watch WTC #7 in this video and try to tell me or try to convince me that that building DID NOT come down in the same fashion as WTCs #1 & #2! WTC #7 wasn’t even on fire and it came straight down at free-fall speed just like the others did. Sick. Americans have a right to question the events of this day and we are!

Yes, you have the right to question that day. And you have the right to make idiotic mistakes in questioning that day. For starters, WTC #7 did not come down in remotely the same fashion as WTCs #1 and #2. The Twin Towers collapsed from the point of impact down. WTC 7 collapsed from the bottom. It and the Towers did not collapse at free-fall speed (sic) as Dr Greening pointed out just the other day. WTC 7 was on fire; not even "Truthers" deny that (they just claim that the fires weren't severe enough).

Expect to see more Lefty bloggers going for the Hail Mary pass with 9-11 Denial.

Update: Check out also this post about Richard Gage and his clown posse over at A&E.

They include a Fire Protection Engineer who’s had his license cancelled 9 years ago, a Land Surveyor, a Mechanical Engineer, and an Electrical Engineer who aren’t qualified to analyze or design structural designs, and a Civil Engineer who’s professional registration check returns no results. Indeed, true scholars for “truthiness” if there ever were any.

They Could Call It NincomPAC

Lord save us from these political neophytes:

It's time for us to start putting up some real MONEY. The best way to do this would be to get David Ray Griffin to oversee an account. We all trust him and believe he is wise and parctical. He could get plenty of help and make the spending 100% transparent. Congressional and presidential andidates that are in favor of a real 9/11 investigation get money. Candidates that are not infavor get ads targeting their stupid positions.

If anyone can get in touch with DRG and get him to agree to this, I am sure that many of us will be more than willing to send in one week's pay or better.

Well, let's see, there are 435 congressional races, which means there will be 868 candidates or so that will be getting negative ads targeting their "stupid" positions, and about two candidates who will be getting the money (Bob Bowman and Samm Sammison).

Just Asking (Stupid) Questions...

It never ends:

Where are the flight recorders?

The ones at the WTC were destroyed in the crash and subsequent collapse of the towers. The FDR at the Pentagon was recovered, as were the FDR and CVR at Shanksville. (Update: The CVR at the Pentagon was also recovered, but it was too damaged to recover information from.)

How did Bush see the first plane crash on live camera?

He didn't.

Why were there no photos or videos of the Pentagon plane?

Because it was moving at a tremendous rate of speed and the security cameras were not meant for something traveling that fast.

Why was there no trace of the Pentagon plane after the attacks, especially the titanium around the jet engines, which were 6 tons each and resilient to volatile burning jet-grade fuel temperatures?

Many, many, "traces" of the Pentagon plane were found.

Why was the hole in the Pentagon only about the size of a scud missile?

A SCUD missile is quite a bit smaller than the hole in the Pentagon. This is typical of the Deniers; they feel compelled to exaggerate everything.

Why didn't jets intercept the airliners since they had several warnings of terrorist attacks?

They did not have warnings that the airliners were going to be flown into buildings. Prior to 9-11 most hijackings ended up with people making demands from the tarmac in Malta.

Why did passengers or crewmembers on three of the flights all use the term "box cutters?"

Not sure that's accurate (IIRC box cutters were mentioned only on Flight 77), but even if it is true, the obvious conclusion is that the hijackers on those flights all used box cutters.

Why was a security meeting that was scheduled for 9/11 cancelled by WTC management on 9/10?

Never heard of this, but it's another typical piece of 9-11 Denial evidence; something that acquires significance solely because it happened that day. And even if the claim is true, unless the security meeting schedule for 9-11 was going to include a demonstration of how to shoot down an approaching airliner, it's irrelevant.

How did they come up with the terrorists so quickly?

We've gone through this so many times before. They looked the flight manifests and the names popped right out at them.

How did they find the terrorist's cars at the airports so quickly?

Because once they had the names they started calling all the rental car companies. It's called investigating.

And some of the questions are just idiotic:

How could the FBI distinguish between Muslims and hijacker Muslims on those flights?

Why was there not one "innocent" Muslim on board any of these flights?

Well, if there were no innocent Muslims, then they didn't have to distinguish between Muslims and hijacker Muslims, eh? Note: I am not sure there were no innocent Muslims on the plane.

Interesting author's name, but it does not appear to be our buddy Jenny.

Hat tip to 9-11 Conspiracy Smasher.

A Response from a Kossack

Yesterday I put out a call for the Daily Kos to begin getting more forceful in their rejection of the 9-11 Denial crowd. Today, one of the "Truther" Kossacks takes me to task:

Why exactly does the official story need defending? Didn't we have a 9/11 Commission to take care of all the questions? I mean we know Kean and Hamilton admit that it was a whitewash, but still is this really necessary?

It's not that the "official story" needs defending. It's that the conspiracy theory needs to be defeated. Look, I'm a moderate conservative in the Rudy Giuliani/John McCain mold, so I know that what I say isn't going to cut much ice with the Kos crowd. But what about David Corn, George Monbiot, Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn?

And Kean and Hamilton did not claim their commission was a whitewash; that an interpretation by a columnist who thought the report should have been more critical of US support for Israel.

As usual, my concern is misinterpreted (as is my name):

Apparently this new poll which shows 35% of Dems believe Bush Knew has caused a panic of sorts. And with John Edwards recently making a comment about looking into the collapse of World Trade Center 7 there seems to be concern that the Dems could use this as part of their platform. And we've already known about Dennis Kucinich's position on this issue.

Believe me, Republicans are praying that the Democrats embrace 9-11 Denial as part of their platform; it seems likely that would be one of the few ways the Democrats could suffer a humiliating defeat in 2008.

No, the reason why I called for the Kos frontpage diarists to tackle this subject head-on is that I look at 9-11 Trutherism as poisonous to the national debate, and very much more to the liberal side than the conservative side. As I said in my previous post, I don't believe the poll that says 35% of Democrats believe in the 9-11 conspiracy theories.

And I am not opposed to further investigation; for example NIST is still working on their report on WTC-7 and I applaud them for that. But the notion that we need yet another 9-11 Commission is absurd because a) they got it mostly right, and b) the Truthers won't be satisfied with any commission that concludes anything less than "9-11 was an inside job!" which would require a commission made up of kooks like Morgan Reynolds, David Ray Griffin and Dylan Avery.

I can understand that when someone who's part of your political opposition makes a recommendation as to what you should do, you're probably smarter ignoring them. But I am not making a recommendation about politics and anyway, this is an issue about which Kos is on record as agreeing with us. We've applauded the many people on the left who've come out forcefully against the 9-11 crackpots, like those I listed above. They know, as Monbiot wrote:

Why do I bother with these morons? Because they are destroying the movements some of us have spent a long time trying to build.

Conspiracy Theory Cartoon

This is pretty funny.

Newspaper Editor Recycles Trash

This guy would be getting a lot more attention if he hadn't come out for 9-11 Denial during the Rosie/Imus/Virginia Tech stories. Still, he's a editor of a fairly major newspaper, the Winnipeg Sun, so unlike Rosie, he has some pretensions to seriousness.

The most dramatically disputed aspect of 9/11 is the question of what the world really saw that day in New York City, when three steel-frame high-rises -- the 110-storey Twin Towers and the 47-storey WTC 7 -- collapsed at near free-fall speed neatly into their own footprints.

Yeah, neatly



into their own



footprints:



This is the usual recycled nonsense that we hear from the Deniers.

This view, though rejected by Popular Mechanics and defenders of the status quo, has won support from engineers and academics from other disciplines. For instance, John McMurtry, a philosophy professor emeritus at the University of Guelph and fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, credits Prof. John Valleau of the Chemistry-Physics Research Group at University of Toronto for drawing his attention to "this scientific anomaly." McMurtry concludes: "The instant and inexplicable collapses of the WTC buildings in uniform demolition style could not be explained by fire (plus, in the case of the Twin Towers, the impact of the airplanes) without contradicting the laws of engineering physics."

Wow, so he got a quote from a philosophy professor on the laws of "engineering physics"? I'm quite impressed; perhaps when we have a question about Plato's allegory of the Cave we could consult Einstein on the matter?

Barrett's "Humor" Falls Flat

Kevin Barrett has apparently decided to make himself into the funny man of 9-11 Denial:

Barrett, the world's leading Irish Muslim truth jihadi, has come out in two-fisted support of "fightin' 9/11 truth-teller 'Irish Rosie' O'Donnell" -- while demanding that accused "sex-harasser and bully Bill O'Reilly admit that he is not Irish at all!"

"O'Reilly's true father was a slinkin' yellow-bellied polecat, not an Irishman," Barrett blustered. "And if ye still want ta throw me in the drink, ye slitherin' coward, I'll meet ye at the banks o' the River Liffey at high noon on Bloomsday next."

Satirist Barrett, the object of a nationally-televised death threat from O'Reilly, made the remarks over a pint of non-alcoholic Guinness while celebrating the release of his new book Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle Against the 9/11 Big Lie.

More "comedy gold" from Barrett:

"Is it true Woodward and Bernstein said that O'Reilly was a CIA asset?"
"No, the Bernstein article came out before Hannity and O'Reilly were nationally known."
"So, the I in CIA doesn't stand for Irish?"
Barrett: "No, that's my group: Crazy Irish-Americans."
"And does BOR (Bill O'Reilly's initials) actually stand for Bore?"
Barrett: "Yes, what you have there is actually a very large-bore bore."

Coming soon, to a public access channel near you!

Answer to a Challenge

Here's a challenge from Jesse over at TV News Lies:

And so, there really is only one way to go right now: the 9/11 discussion either has to end immediately or it has to go public full force! I am personally calling out the people who continue to cling to the official story! Bring your experts, bring the 9/11 Commission, bring your debunkers and openly debate me and the team I put together. If you hear us out and answer our questions honestly in a public and open forum, we’ll go away! If not, we want mainstream televised coverage of the research we have done.

And I want to win the Powerball. Look, this is silly; we get this crap from Dylan and Jason virtually every weekend. "Why won't you guys call in and debate us on our show?" Answer: Because there's no point to it. Why would I want to go on Looser than Words Radio, which probably has about 20 people listening to it, all of whom are confirmed 9-11 Deniers? I am interesting in debating 9-11 Deniers, but only if the audience is on the fence. There is very little point to debating the crackpots at their own conference, which, of course is what Jesse has in mind:

I will arrange for a public conference, perhaps at a university, and perhaps one that spans several days. We will have hearings. Our researchers and witnesses will present a case, as if in a court of law. Our purpose will be to expose the lies contained within the official story. We will show how the 9/11 Commission changed, omitted or misrepresented much of the original evidence and testimony. We will make the case that the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelekow, refused testimony and evidence and did not allow any information that disputed the pre-approved official story. We will not go beyond what we know for certain although we will include all related information regarding means, motive, opportunity and suspicious behavior or coincidence. Then the representatives of the official story will address the issues as presented.

Such a deal! All I have to do is fly to some university, sit through hours (or days) of the same old regurgitated crap and then debate only those issues you presented. And by the way, you're not going to mention any theories, just ask questions and demonstrate evidence of "suspicious" behavior.

Here's my proposal. I will go on any TV or radio show that has a legitimate audience that is not entirely made up of nutbars and fruitcakes. That is, I'm not interested in Alex Jones, but I would go on with Charles Goyette, even though I think he sandbagged Popular Mechanics. The other condition I would add is that the focus of the debate has to be on the question, "Was 9-11 an Inside Job?", not "Are there problems with the 9-11 Commission Report?"

Cute But....

I don't think this is going to impress anybody with the maturity level of the 9-11 Denial Movement.

The Media Are Frightened of the 9-11 Deniers?

That's their latest claim, but it's right up there with the 84% of Americans are Deniers nonsense:

The corporate media have launched a desperate attempt to eliminate all discussions about the official body of evidence related to the events of 9/11. Just watch how they are trying frantically to get Rosie O’Donnell fired from ABC’s The View. Also think back to when the media launched a broad based attack against the character of Charlie Sheen for daring to publicly question the official story of 9/11. Rosie, however, is a much greater problem for the criminals in the media. She is on a daily network TV program with a large audience that doesn’t even know that questions and disturbing facts about 9/11 exist.

The media aren't going after Rosie, for the most part. Conservative media (O'Reilly, Joe Scarborough, Michelle Malkin) are. And it's because they're ticked off at the 9-11 Deniers and their enablers like Rosie, James Brolin and Charlie Sheen. The liberal media have been ignoring the story because they don't want to do anything to harm a vocal critic of President Bush, even if they do know that Rosie's gone 'round the bend on 9-11 tinfoil hattery.

I had to laugh at this rather forced analogy:

Have you ever seen the movie Cape Fear? In the film, Max Cady is a criminal who is released after a long prison term. While Cady was in prison he teaches himself law, using the prison library. While in prison Max discovers that his lawyer had been in possession of evidence that might have affected the outcome of the trial. However, the lawyer had not disclosed any of it to either Cady or the jury. He did not allow the jury to see evidence that might have led them to conclude that Cady did not commit the crime of which he was accused. For those of you who saw the movie, you know how angry Cady was when he got out of jail. And you also know that Cady’s vengeance is taken out on his lawyer, not on the jury that actually put him in jail.

Let me suggest that in the theoretical Case of 9/11, you, the American people, are very much like the members of the jury, just as and the criminal corporate media parallel the lawyer in the film.

Well, let's see what does that make the Deniers? Max Cady, the nut played by DeNiro?

Superhero Gatekeepers

Rosie Continues the Woo!

She claims that "Nearly everyone in this administration is under indictment or suspicion." Of course, it would help if she actually had the name of one person. The people she does name, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, are not, to my knowledge, under indictment. About the only significant person in the administration who has actually been indicted is Scooter Libby.

Note as well, the BS about Rosie being against the War on Terror "because it makes people into evil and good." I am comfortably certainly Rosie herself "makes people into evil and good," and the dividing line is between Republicans and Democrats.

On the other hand, Elisabeth makes the mistake of letting Rosie get away with "did Iraq have anything to do with 'blowing up' the towers?" Sadly, Elisabeth then claims that Iraq had a part in 9-11, which is not true.

How Stuff Doesn't Work

Jeez, our buddy Sword of Truth pointed this one out over at JREF, and it's certainly worth a gander. The website, How Stuff Works, is generally considered reliable for science and hardware explanations. How Stuff Work's homepage has a page rank of eight, which is huge (Ford Motor Company's homepage is a seven, for example). It is the 30th most commonly cited webpage on the blogs according to Technorati. But...

When it comes to explaining how conspiracy theories work, Marshall Brain, who founded the site apparently buys this completely unscientific nonsense. Get this:

In the 21st century, one event reigns supreme in the catalog of conspiracy theories: the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States. This event is seared into the nation's consciousness and significantly affected the entire planet. It seems inevitable that people would cry "conspiracy" about any event with this much impact. However, the conspiracy theories around 9/11 have been strong and consistent.

There's a good compound word for that, and the first half is bull. Conspiracy theories around 9/11 have been marginal, easily debunked, and incredibly inconsistent.

The U.S. government has offered the terrorist explanation, and that is the story that many people believe. A large number of people, however, refuse to believe this "official story." They believe conspiracy theorists when they say that the U.S. government actually masterminded and executed the attack.

We could spend a great deal of time arguing one side or the other. Instead, we'll focus on the process. Isn't it fascinating that there can be two credible explanations for such a complex event, and that both explanations can be so diametrically opposed to one another?

But, as we shall see, Marshall's Brain really finds one explanation more credible than the other.

Brain provides a timeline, of which I thought these three datapoints were illustrative:

# 9:43 a.m. - Flight 77 hits the Pentagon.
# 10:05 a.m. - The South Tower falls.
# 10:10 a.m. - Flight 93 crashes in Pennsylvania.

As our buddy Gravy would say, they got that 100% wrong. Flight 77 hit the Pentagon at 9:37, the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 and Flight 93 crashed at 10:03 (or 10:06 according to some claims).

So for a conspiracy theory to get started, there has to be something that a conspiracy theorist can use, something that doesn't make sense. In some conspiracy theories, it's something very small. But in the case of 9/11, there are four big things that do not make much sense in the official story. These things include:

# Three skyscrapers collapsed. Never has a skyscraper ever collapsed because of fire. When the North and South Towers collapsed, that might have seemed believable because of the giant airplanes that crashed into them. But when WTC 7 collapsed, that was completely unprecedented.

# The way the President and his handlers acted when the second plane crashed into the South Tower. The reaction was strange. When the first plane crashed into the North Tower, it might be possible to excuse the behavior of the President's team because maybe nobody really knew what happened. However, by the time the second jet hit, everyone knew what was happening, so the fact that the President and his handlers did not respond immediately is certainly odd.

# The Pentagon could be hit by a big, lumbering passenger jet. On the face of it, that seems completely impossible. The Pentagon, after all, is the nerve center for the largest and most sophisticated military organization that the world has ever known. So it is reasonable to assume that there would be a defensive system in place, making the building invulnerable. Surely buildings like the Pentagon would be protected by surface-to-air missiles, wouldn't they? The attack on the Pentagon happened 58 minutes after the first plane crashed into the North Tower, which was plenty of time to scramble jets and protect Washington, D.C. even if there were no missiles on the ground.

# Not one of the four hijacked planes was shot down by fighters, even though fighter interception is fairly standard. This is also strange, especially in the case of the Pentagon. For example, when Payne Steward's Lear jet went off course in 1999, more than 10 planes intercepted it over the course of its flight, with the first interception happening within 20 minutes of flight controllers noticing a problem [ref]. So why was there an apparent lack of response to these four hijacked jets?

That is jam-packed with 9-11 Denial nonsense. The steel portion of the Windsor Towers did collapse, and like all Deniers, Marshall wants us to ignore the fact that WTC 1 and 2 were not solely on fire, but had also suffered serious structural damage from the impact of the planes, and that WTC 7 had suffered serious structural damage from the collapse of WTC 1. The bit about the President and his staff is clearly lame conjecture. As for the big, lumbering commercial jet, it crashed into the Pentagon at over 500 miles per hour. No, there are no surface-to-air missiles on the Pentagon, for the simple reason that there's an airport less than two miles away. It's not 58 minutes, but 55 minutes later, and oh, by the way Payne Stewart's plane was intercepted in 80 minutes, not 20.

It does not get any better.

By concluding that, however, the theorist has to explain everything else that happened on September 11. If WTC 7's demolition was pre-planned, then all of September 11 was pre-planned. The repercussions of that realization impact every part of the "official story." For example:

* There were no terrorists. Or if there were, their actions were coordinated by the government rather than Al Queda.
* Terrorists did not spontaneously fly the planes into the buildings -- the government did.
* The North and South Towers were also rigged with explosives ahead of time, like WTC 7, and their collapses were staged events that killed thousands of innocent people.
* The crash at the Pentagon was staged as well. Or, possibly, no passenger jet was involved at all. A missile may have struck the Pentagon instead of a jetliner.
* Flight 93 may have never actually happened as described in the official story. It might have been completely staged as well, or it may have been shot by a missile.

This conspiracy story is radically different from the official story. But is it believable?

If you are willing to move past the revulsion that this story elicits, this new story is not too difficult to believe. Secretly rigging three buildings for demolition is not hard to imagine. The government has known teams of people trained to do things like this (such as Navy SEALS), and it is logical to assume that there are secret teams as well. It is easy to imagine the government taking over, or even substituting, the jets that crashed into the North and South Towers. It is easy to imagine a cruise missile being fired at the Pentagon and hitting it in exactly the way that the building was hit.

Note that along the way that the site never gives any clue that this is complete nuttery; indeed, with the use of phrases like "not too difficult to believe", and "it is logical to assume" and "It is easy to imagine", Marshall guides the reader towards belief in this crackpottery.

The article does briefly mention debunkers, but in the "Lots More Information", there are 26 links, with exactly ONE going to a debunking site and 25 going to 9-11 Denial sites.

Phryngula, a science blog, caught onto How Stuff Doesn't Work awhile ago.

Right On Cue

Like I said last post, there are many different flavors of 9-11 Denial?

Over at 9-11 Blogger:

Thank you to Kevin Ryan, Mike Berger and Webster Tarpley for their great presentations, each of which brought their own flavor so it was never boring.

Solid Article by a Former CT

(Note: A few commenters pointed out that the writer wasn't a real 9-11 Denier, so I changed the title slightly).

On what happens if the 9-11 Denial Movement is wrong:

The movement’s supporters ask us to think about what it would mean if their claims of a conspiracy were true. This is fair enough, but they rarely ask what it would mean if their claims are wrong. They probably don’t like to think about what the answer would be. If their claims are unfounded, this would mean that a large segment of the Bush administration’s critics, most of them on the left, have wasted a lot of time and energy chasing their own tails instead of really challenging the regime. It would mean that they had severely compromised their own credibility, and, in the eyes of the public, the credibility of the entire anti-war movement for decades to come. It would mean that the 9-11 truth movement has been the anti-war movement’s Trojan Horse.

He notes how easily many of the movements claims have been debunked:

I could go on, but I think you get my point. These are supposedly two of the most damning pieces of evidence the movement can muster, and they blow apart like dandelion fluff in a strong breeze. Maybe I haven’t looked hard enough, but so far I haven’t found any argument put forward by the movement that stands up to sustained scrutiny.

A Reasonably Good Article

On the Deniers:

If a new investigation took place, would government agencies co-operate? Would the White House stifle co-operation? Would pro-conspiracy investigators be prepared to accept evidence they do not like from structural engineers? Are pro-conspiracy investigators then going to cherry-pick the evidence they want? One wonders if the 9/11 Truth Movement isn’t working backwards. Have they first decided the verdict, and then, second, gone about seeking the evidence to substantiate it?

Precisely, as do all conspiracy theorists. The article isn't perfect; for example, he buys into the ridiculous CounterPunch article on 9-11 foreknowledge by the Israelis:

In his superlative article of investigative journalism, What Did Israel Know in Advance of the 9/11 Attacks? (Counterpunch,Vol. 14. No.3/4, February 2007), Christopher Ketcham asks several questions:What did the U.S. government know in advance of 9/11? Why did our government do nothing with information handed to it by Israeli agents working (illegally) in the U.S? A close study of Ketcham’s article might make one wonder if the CIA (illegally) subcontracts work to the government of Israel.

A closer study would reveal that the supposed foreknowledge is a bunch of BS. Still, overall, the article is a good one.

Questioning Motivations

I've touched on this a few times, but in general I prefer combatting the Deniers on the evidence rather than on their motivations. But it dawned on me that the motivations may be more the key to understanding their beliefs than the evidence itself.

Look, for example, at Holocaust Denial. At first it is tempting to believe that Holocaust Deniers are trying to absolve the German people and especially the Nazis of their guilt in this horrific case of genocide. And some of the Holocaust Denier's surnames, like Zundel and Hufschmid give us reason to wonder if that is their motivation.

But what about Eric D. Williams? I have no particular reason to believe that he is descended from Germans. So it seems unlikely that whitewashing the Nazis is his motivation. I suspect Holocaust Denial for him has more to do with the present day state of affairs than with World War II. If we deny the Holocaust, then Israel's founding seems completely unjustified, as is (arguably) America's support for Israel.

And it seems quite possible that 9-11 Denial springs from similar motivations. Libertarians oppose the Patriot Act. But if 9-11 was an inside job, then there was no justification for the Patriot Act. Some on the far left and far right want President Bush impeached. Look, for example, at the intro to this DRG article in Tikkun:

Because we at Tikkun are aware of extensive arguments that have appeared elsewhere against the perspective presented by the author of this piece, we debated long and hard about whether to present David Ray Griffin's argument here. We decided it was still important, given that if his view is true, the position he articulates would provide adequate grounds for impeachment of the president, grounds far more substantive than those that formed the basis of the impeachment by a Republican dominated Congress of President Bill Clinton.

Essentially they are saying, yes, 9-11 Denial is kooky, but if it's true we'd be able to get rid of Bush, so we'll print Griffin's article.

Jon Gold has much the same take over at 9-11 Blogger. He tries to sell Cindy Sheehan on 9-11 Denial, but is it on the basis that it's the "Truth" or is it on the basis that this is how other things can be achieved? You guessed it:

Cindy, 9/11 Truth will end this "illegal Iraq occupation" faster than ANYTHING anyone has been able to dream up so far. Not only will it do that, but it will reverse our loss of civil liberties, our loss of the Constitution, and our loss of stature in the eyes of the world.

As George W. Bush himself said, "we went to war because we were attacked, and we are at war today because there are still people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens."

9/11 was the justification for the "illegal Iraq occupation". If you take away that justification, Cindy, then all of this can end.