Some look back to 9/11 and see a U.S. conspiracy

Some look back to 9/11 and see a U.S. conspiracy

In the five years since the attacks, theories of a U.S. government conspiracy took root and grew, particularly in the Upper Midwest.

Bob Von Sternberg, Star Tribune
Last update: September 05, 2006 – 10:35 PM

As the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks looms, skepticism about the official version of the atrocities that day has gained traction in the minds of many Americans and among a small, but growing, number of academics.

It's following a well-trod path in American culture, in which belief in conspiracy theories grows as a traumatic event recedes into history -- think the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Adherents to the idea that the government orchestrated the attacks, or at least allowed them to happen, come from across the political spectrum. And the Upper Midwest has been an incubator of sorts for these notions.

An instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison kicked up a statewide political ruckus this summer that had several politicians calling for his head because of his views.

The UW instructor, self-described Arabist Kevin Barrett, said his antagonists, mostly Republican officeholders, "are a bunch of witch-hunting politicians who are obviously terrified that their hold on power will be utterly annihilated."

Retired University of Minnesota Duluth philosophy Prof. James Fetzer is founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth. "What the government committed was shock and awe on American soil," he said. "And all of their explanations are phony, a fraud, a hoax, a myth."

Nuzi Haneef, a software engineer from Eagan, has organized the MN 9/11 Questions Meetup Group. It has attracted more than three dozen participants.

"The story about 9/11 that the government said is true is really not plausible," she said. "When you put it all together ... there's obviously been a coverup."

Peter Knight, senior lecturer in American studies at the University of Manchester and editor of the 2002 book "Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America," called the movement "a strange beast, an amalgam of elements. You've got the anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war crowd -- you know, if they lied about the war, maybe they lied about 9/11. Another part is people merely interested in the anomalies, with no preconceived political agenda.

"Then you have the more traditional right-wing conspiracy part of the continuum that believes a vast cabal has taken over the United States, the mega-conspiracy of the right's new world order. To them, all of these things are connected. Each group inserts 9/11 into its preexisting conspiracy model."

Often derided as fringe-dwellers, people pushing the 9/11 conspiracy turn out to have a lot of company.

Continued...

Thanks, Aaron.

Hijack 'suspects' alive and well

forward this http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1559151.stm to fox,cnn (the so called journalists)

Bush as we speak.

Bush:"the 9/11 attacks horrified our nation"

Bush:"On 9/11, we entered a new dangerous war"

Bush:"terrorists are still trying to strike america"

Bush:"our nation awoke to nightmare attack on 9/11"
and on and on and on........

some 9/11 victims family members are present for this disgusting speech. the propaganda is getting very thick.

Bush/Hitler is speaking about our Guantonamo concertraition camp

Bush/Hitler is speaking about our Guantonamo concertraition/torture camps!!! Just his lying voice drives me nuts!!!

"terrorists are still trying to strike america"

"terrorists are still trying to strike america".....He should know!

Military Tribunals

This is something we need to focus on.

Our president is on live TV advocating a system of military tribunals for 9/11 suspects.

From MSNBC:

"It came as the president also was pressing a hard line with Congress Wednesday on legislation he says is needed to permit the trial of terror suspects through military tribunals. Bush exhorted lawmakers to allow evidence to be withheld from a defendant, if necessary, to protect classified information."

Consider this for a moment. 9/11 trials which will be conducted as military tribunals, with the government retaining the right to supress evidence.

No civilian oversight. No real defense allowed (since evidence can be suppressed).

What sort of bananna republic do we live in now?

Doesn't the public have a right to hold these 9/11 trials - and hear all the evidence?

Of course not. The government can simply hold kangaroo courts to declare men guilty of murder - and the behest of the president - with the defendent and the public itself shielded from the evidence.

In other words, dictatorship.

like Moussaoui

- John Karr: pleaded guilty to have murdered Jonbenet, yet acquitted after no evidence was found to support the claim

- Moussaoui: claimed to have plotted to fly a 747 into the Whitehouse, and to have talked to OBL about it, with no evidence whatsoever for all that, not even a pencil sketch plan of it, he just said it, and .... voila, sentenced to life in prison (with Republicans angry it wasn't death row)

Ergo: 'terrorists' face a new court system under Bush's state of war, one where you are guilty unless proven innocent, and one where 'thoughts' alone amount to the highest crime

Commet

It does'nt take anything to engage in horrible acts to prosper,
living by God's law, living a truthful life, minding your
own business is all God asks. When life is over people who
engage in un-told of acts will realize they decieved themselves.

The US is waking up to the horrible events of 9/11.

http://www.iranfocus.com/modu

http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=8512

Iran says U.S., Israel ordered September 11 attacks
Wed. 06 Sep 2006

Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Sep. 06 – The Supreme Commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps accused the Bush Administration and the Israeli security service Mossad of ordering the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, DC.

“The events of September 11 were ordered by U.S. [officials] and Mossad so that they could carry out their strategy of pre-emption and warmongering and unipolarisation in order to dominate the Middle East”, Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi told military commanders on Tuesday. His comments were reported by the state-run news agency ISNA.

General Safavi said that Iran was the leading force of the “Islamic world”. “The geographic heart of the Islamic world is in Mecca and Medina. But, the political heart of the Islamic world is in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] is the flag-bearer of the front of Islamic awakening and the fronts of the awakening of third world nations”, he said.

He said that Washington had been defeated in its strategy of “attacking Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon” and creating a new order in the Middle East.

“The U.S.’s neo-conservative strategy was to dominate the vast energy resources of the Persian Gulf in order to be able to control Europe, China, and India and drive the world to a unipolar state. Therefore, it planned to change undesirable regimes such as those of Iraq, Sudan, Syria, and Afghanistan”.

The IRGC general said that the Lebanese militia Hezbollah had defeated Israel during their recent war. “After many years, the political and military image and hollow might of the Zionist regime was broken and the real power of Hezbollah fighters was proven. Thus, Hezbollah defeated Israel”.

He described Washington and Tel Aviv as two “inter-continental threats” against Tehran. “The U.S. must be livid at Iran because of its disgraceful defeats in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon. Regarding [Iran’s] nuclear dossier, it might try to create circumstances so that slowly but surely economic and political pressure is applied against Iran by the [United Nations] Security Council”.

He accused Washington of plotting a “cultural” attack on Tehran by setting up new radio and television stations broadcasting into Iran, supporting dissident groups, and stepping up intelligence operations. “Therefore, the armed forces must be completely prepared in order to combat any forms of foreign and domestic threats”, he said.

He charged that Britain and the U.S. were stirring ethnic and religious divisions in Iran, in particular in the provinces close to the country’s frontiers.

The IRGC’s primary task is to export the Islamic revolution to Jerusalem via Baghdad.

Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is one of many officials who stem from the IRGC.

back on topic

This article from the Star Tribune really irks me. It's the arrogant, upper-handedness of writers like this who subtly, and not so subtly, throw in their all-knowing attitude and bias front and center. Examples:

It's following a well-trod path in American culture, in which belief in conspiracy theories grows as a traumatic event recedes into history -- think the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

A well-trod path -- the implication being it's "been there, done that", nothing to see here folks, move on, same old crazy conspiracy theorists.

Next up:

Adherents to the idea that the government orchestrated the attacks, or at least allowed them to happen, come from across the political spectrum. And the Upper Midwest has been an incubator of sorts for these notions.

An incubator of sorts for these notions. Oh I see.... anyone who questions 9/11, even armed with 1000 facts of government complicity, just has "notions" that are incubating (implication being they're like unsubstantiated rumors that lots of people are picking up on, with little to no basis in fact).

An instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison kicked up a statewide political ruckus this summer that had several politicians calling for his head because of his views.

Gee, I didn't realize that Barrett was responsible for kicking up a statewide political ruckus. If I understood that controversy correctly, Barrett was attacked by Rep. Nass who wanted to have him removed from his teaching position. Not exactly the same, ya know. But, hey, let's blame the "conspiracy theorist" for kicking things up. Only later in the article does the author state that Nass led the push for Barrett's firing. But, of course, anyone who didn't know what happened would tend to believe Barrett actually kicked up the ruckus.

Peter Knight, senior lecturer in American studies at the University of Manchester and editor of the 2002 book "Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America," called the movement "a strange beast, an amalgam of elements. You've got the anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war crowd -- you know, if they lied about the war, maybe they lied about 9/11. Another part is people merely interested in the anomalies, with no preconceived political agenda.

"Then you have the more traditional right-wing conspiracy part of the continuum that believes a vast cabal has taken over the United States, the mega-conspiracy of the right's new world order. To them, all of these things are connected. Each group inserts 9/11 into its preexisting conspiracy model."

Often derided as fringe-dwellers, people pushing the 9/11 conspiracy turn out to have a lot of company.

A nationwide poll in July by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that 36 percent of respondents think the federal government either assisted in the attacks or allowed them to happen as a pretext to start a war in the Middle East.

The poll also found that 16 percent of respondents think the World Trade Center's twin towers were toppled by hidden explosives and 12 percent think the Pentagon was hit by a U.S. cruise missile.

(By comparison, the same poll found that 38 percent think the feds are withholding proof of the existence of intelligent life from other planets.)

These paragraphs are doozies. Pigeonhole and then discredit the "conspiracy theorists" for supposedly having political agendas and preexisting models, based on some "expert" who'll put them in their place, and THEN go after the millions of Americans who don't believe the official version, lumping them all together (by implication again) -- guilt by association (all those millions of Americans must therefore fit into the predefined categories by the "expert") AND then the author slips in a parenthetical bit of data about 38 percent believing the feds are withholding info about aliens. Now, there's some SERIOUS guilt by association. Of course, there's ZERO correlation of these polls to one another -- perhaps those 38% actually believe in the official version of 9/11. But, the author has used this slight of hand to again discredit anyone who questions 9/11.

I doubt these kinds of tactics are working on as many readers nowadays. This just shows how desperate the media to deflect attention from the truth.

I'll stop now.... you get the picture.

Thumbs up

for your comment!

Alas!

Alas for a wonder we shall see no more! When the Great Twins were toppled, I assumed that you the American people would build them up again, not to be defeated by those who would take your freedoms.

Alas! Instead, in their place, a so-called "freedom tower"! I look at the design of that... and I remember when I was a little boy. The adults took us to Coventry, to visit the cathedral (a hideous piece of architecture). And they, who needed to convince themselves, told us all the "in" cliches about one having "to understand" the art of the place, the symbolism of this or that - when we in our childish simplicity only thought the placve was ugly.

I remember best of all when we stood outside in the ruins of the bombed out shell of the *old* cathedral. I can even now remember thinking how much better it should have been if they had only REBUILT that!

A similar feeling I would have if I ever visited New York to see your so called "freedom tower". Alas, it just is not the same. Indeed if you are not going to put them back, this so-called tower just insults the memory: there was something better before.

Alas, for the true wonders that have forever gone! Alas that therein those who did this now have won!

CNN Situation Room NOW!

They're going to have a piece on the 9/11 docudrama hit piece within the next half hour.

Im sure

That will be nothing but a plug for that ABC liefest.

I don't doubt it but,

it should be interesting to hear if any new slip-ups happen.

Hopefully someone who reads this will have the capability to record it. ***kicks self for not building a DVR yet****

A Letter to the Star Tribune in Minnesota

Dear Mr. von Sternberg,

I just read your 9/11 article in the Star Tribune, and I would like to respond to a point that many psychologists are always bringing up in the various 9/11 Truth Movement related articles published as of late. The psychology professors being interviewed for the articles never fail to mention that the real reason that there is all of this doubt out there about the government version of the 9/11 attacks is that, after a great tragedy, Americans have a deep psychological need to get lost in outlandish conspiracy theories concerning the tragic horror they went through. It is part of the grief process we are told, and this is exactly what happened right after 9/11. We were all in total shock, we needed to be told why this horrible event happened, and thus we all quickly bought into the outlandish conspiracy theory that 19 young Saudis, working for an old man on dialysis, who lived in a cave in far-off Afghanistan, armed only with box cutters and plastic forks and knives, simultaneously took over four commercial aircrafts being flown at the time by ex-Navy and Air Force pilots with military martial arts training. Then with only basic D to C- training on small Cessnas, these young men flew these four huge, highly complicated airliners with incredible professional, military-like precision, guiding three into their targets. During this entire time (an hour and a half), the all-powerful, all-knowing NORAD is remarkably at full Stand-Down with regards to scrambling F-16 fighters to deal with these four hijacked airplanes. The legally allowed time for scrambling operations to be launched is within ten minutes. A ten minute operational launch time is considered very poor, and after ten minutes, people are usually court-martialed if such incompetence is displayed in a live, real-world situation. All of this is of course accompanied by the historically unprecedented total meltdown of three steel-frame skyscrapers from a fire started from kerosene jet fuel which physically burns 700 to 1000 degrees Fahrenheit below the melting point of steel. We were then told that we were attacked like this because a bunch of crazy Muslims hate us because of our freedoms, after which the USA Patriot Act was passed, unread, and now we are losing the very freedoms these supposedly crazy Muslims hated us for and attacked us for in the first place. Freedoms, like that of speech, peaceful assembly, and that of the press. The freedom to peacefully dissent against crimes that may have been committed by employees of the local, state, or federal governments is nearly gone. When all checks and balances in the system have failed, the dissenting citizen is the last check against tyranny. Do you still believe that you really have privacy when you email someone or talk on the phone?

We certainly believed the above, and now completely discredited, conspiracy theory, because we were in shock at the time, as your psychology professor source mentioned. Now the years have passed a bit, the shock has warn off, and with a body of empirical, scientific evidence and documentation in various media -- text documents, video, sworn and written testimonies, etc. -- Americans are now able to coolly, rationally, and intelligently look at the huge body of accumulated evidence brought forward by serious researchers into the events of 9/11. This body of evidence shows that indeed a conspiracy did take place, but the people involved in the conspiracy were not the ones we were led to believe were involved, and the real reasons for the conspiracy and the 9/11 operation were not at all the reasons that we were told they were. In these days, you must always follow the pipeline to get to the root of any news event happening in the Middle East or Central Asia, but as a modern journalist you already know that, I hope.

If you ever get to do another article on this "wild and wacky," American 9/11 truth movement, which you probably won't, it would be interesting if you could put in some of the accumulated evidence that all of us out here are looking at. A curious journalist might legitimately ask -- Why do all these people so strongly reject the official government/911 Commission story? What evidence are they seeing that I am perhaps unaware of? Well-educated people with M.A.s, Ph.D.s and law degrees do not subscribe easily to wacky conspiracy theories. Perhaps they are aware of things that you are unaware of. You should really look at the evidence, and then think about who would really have the motive, means, and opportunity to actually pull all of this off. You could do an entire article on the 9/11 scholars' case for controlled demolition of WTC 1, 2 and 7. I have seen the mathematics and read the peer-reviewed papers. Their case is very tight, which begs the question, who did plant all the dynamite and thermate in those buildings? I'll bet you it wasn't a bunch of Saudi kids. They didn't teach professional, large structure demolition engineering at those little flight schools down there in Florida. Why were bomb-sniffing dogs all pulled off their WTC patrols five days before 9/11. You should see the interview on YouTube.com with Fiduciary Trust's Scott Forbes telling his story of how on the weekend before 9/11, parts of the towers were shut down, and all sorts of 'workers' were coming in and out of the buildings all weekend, supposedly installing higher speed internet cabling. There are still about 500 unanswered, legitimate questions remaining from the list that the 9/11 families' attorneys submitted to the 9/11 Commission. The Commission answered about three of their questions, poorly, and that is why roughly 50% of 9/11 victims' families now feel very strongly that 9/11 was indeed an 'inside job'. That would also be a good story for you to cover, but cover the story from the angle of why they think that it was an inside job, not just the fact that think it as such, which is the usual media angle. Reporting that certain people think in a certain way and not reporting on why they think that way is an incomplete story, which I guess in these times is the ultimate goal of modern journalism.

Americans will soon have to come to grips with the horrible truths of this story. It has been very hard for all of us, believe me. Do you think we like this? Do you think it's fun to be an American right now, helplessly watching your good old American Constitution and Bill of Rights ripped to shreds by mentally retarded used car salesmen and the criminally insane, while the mainstream media duct-tape their mouths shut in abject fear? I wish that Muslim terrorists had taken over those planes, and Osama bin Laden really was the big bad boogieman that we have to courageously fight. It would make things a lot simpler, and that is why a large portion of the sedated American TV public prefer the original 9/11 conspiracy theory story so much. Unfortunately, the kids are starting to grow up, wake up and realize that there is no Santa Claus or tooth fairy or Easter bunny, and when they wake up fully, they are going to be really, really mad. In a June, 1992 exclusive, and published, interview granted by President George H. W. Bush to Sarah McClendon, the grand dame of the White House press corps at the time, she asked him “George Bush, what will the people do if they ever find out the truth about Iraq-gate and Iran-Contra?” He replied, “Sarah, if the American people ever find out what we have done, they will chase us down the streets and lynch us.”

I've heard from my media friends that the word is out from the 'Higher Ups' that 9/11 is the "third rail." If you touch it, you can die, or at least lose your job. Do you remember the McCarthy Era? Stay safe, my friend. This news story is being played for all the marbles. As Andreas von Bülow, former German government minister and author of "Die CIA und der 11 September," recently remarked, "If what I say is right, the whole U.S. government should end up behind bars."

Good luck, and good night,

Dr. Ernesto

What in the hell is an

What in the hell is an "Arabist," as in "self-described Arabist"? Someone who practices "Arabism"? Could this _be_ any more negatively suggestive without openly calling the man a terrorist?

LOL @ the term

"Arabist"! That's almost as bad as a corrupt cop pulling someone over because they were driving while being black! LMAO

A much worthier headline:

A much worthier headline: Some look back to 9/11 and don't see a U.S. conspiracy