Et tu, Gwynne Dyer?

Gwynne Dyer is one of the best minds out there when it comes to military history, and the history of war. He is also remarkably prescient at times when it comes to short-term projection of tactical scenarios. However, it's pretty clear that he knows next to nothing about 9/11 skepticism, but he still felt a need to write this crappy hit piece about Loose Change. My comments in red. -r.)

That makes 10,000 sworn to 9/11 silence

Growing obsession with 9/11 doc’s theories only detracts from Bush’s real crimes (Because Gwynne Dyer says so! If indeed 9/11 was a complex psychological operation designed to trigger a knee-jerk fascist military response to initiate the “Global War on Terror” – then the “real crimes” that Dyer alludes to are a bunch of bat-squeeze by comparison. It’s not “obsession” it’s a mass awakening via the new medium of the internet. Deal with it.)

By GWYNNE DYER

The 9/11 conspiracy theory is back, (It’s “back”? This pre-supposes that it was “gone”. When did it “go away” Mr. Dyer?) in a much more virulent form, (More virulent than what?) and normally sane people are being taken in by it. (No. Sane people are not buying the Official Conspiracy Theory. They are still sane.) I am getting half a dozen earnest e-mails every day telling me I must see a film called Loose Change.

It has been around in various versions for almost two years, but it now seems to be gathering converts faster than ever. Well, I have seen it, and I concede that it is a much slicker, more professional product than other 9/11 conspiracy films, and therefore more seductive. But the argument is pure paranoid fantasy, and it is rotting people's brains. (Wrong. If you saw Loose Change 2nd Edition, then you know that it opens with “Operation Northwoods”. A plan approved by all the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and apparently axed by a cold-footed JFK after the poorly executed “Bay of Pigs” bungle. Is that a paranoid fantasy to you Mr. Dyer? Maybe you need to be more paranoid. Please provide the data which supports your observation that one single person is suffering from a “rotting brain” as a result of watching Loose Change.)

There have always been two kinds of 9/11 conspiracy theory. The lesser sort held that the Bush administration had advance intelligence of al Qaeda's plans but chose to ignore the warning because the attacks suited its purposes.

The greater version insisted that there was no al Qaeda involvement and that the attacks were carried out by the U.S. government. (STRAWMAN! The “greater version” could very well include al Qaeda as a team of useful dupes or “patsies”.)

Until recently, the greater version was largely confined to the Arab world. (Not true. Skepticism about 9/11 runs broad and deep across national boundaries and ethnicity, and Canada’s very own Barrie Zwicker was calling out the US government for malfeasance at the very least, on the very day of 9/11.) Very few Americans took that idea seriously, though many wondered whether the intelligence lapses had really been accidental. (How would you know? Was a survey conducted about beliefs about what happened on 9/11 shortly after 9/11? Because current surveys show that a majority in the US don’t buy the Official Conspiracy Theory.)

Even the lesser conspiracy would have required the complicity of half a dozen very senior people who received the intelligence and decided to ignore it: the heads of the CIA and the FBI, the national security adviser (Condoleezza Rice), the secretaries of defence and state (Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell), plus, of course, Vice-President Cheney and perhaps President Bush. (What if al Qaeda is a controlled asset, similar to the way the Muslim Brotherhood was a controlled asset for Western Intelligence post-WWII (see John Loftus) directed by a very small clique of intelligence operatives, perhaps with some 3rd party mercenary handlers. What if the handlers make sure that the only evidence that trickles up is vetted to hide intelligence fingerprints, and show Arab ones? Of what value then, would ignoring planted intelligence leads have? Conversely, of what value would following planted leads have but to shore up the Official Conspiracy Theory? “Look, ma! Arabs!”)

It would also have required the permanent silence (or silencing) of a dozen lower-level intelligence analysts who knew that the senior people had seen the information. I don't believe that happened, because I don't think Tenet, Rice, Powell et al. would have plotted the deaths of thousands of Americans. I don't believe even Dick Cheney would have done that. (I don’t care what you “believe”. During the cold war, American think tanks coldly calculated the deaths of millions of Russians and Chinese in the case of a nuclear conflict, with the US throwing the first punch in some scenarios. You think it would be difficult to find some ex-cold warriors that wouldn’t bat an eye at the concept of a Pearl Harbor-sized death toll on US soil to trigger a Military Industrial Cash Cow worth billions and billions of dollars?) And I note that there has been no inexplicable wave of sudden deaths among junior intelligence analysts in Washington.

I do believe, however, that 9/11 served the purposes of the neo-conservatives and their allies in the Bush administration. (And you would define Neoconservatism how, exactly? HINT: rhymes with "ass-ism".)

They were already planning to attack Iraq, as part of a larger plan, dating back to the late 1990s and the Project for a New American Century, to re-launch Pax America and re-establish American hegemony in the 21st-century world. I agree that they were adroit in seizing on 9/11 as a way of enlisting popular support for their project. But that's all. (Yeah, AND they needed a new Pearl Harbor to kick it off, right? RIGHT?)

I cannot absolutely refute the lesser conspiracy theory, but I find it extremely implausible. The greater conspiracy theory, on the other hand, is just plain loony – yet more and more people are falling for it in the West, where it was once the exclusive domain of people with poor personal hygiene. You cannot overstate the impact of a well-made film. (Listen, Grizzly Adams, you could probably use a shave, yourself. The source of the bulk of 9/11 skepticism is Made In USA, always has been. And I wouldn't be surprised if 9/11 "disinformation" is part of an intelligence operation, also Made in USA. You have not researched this phenomenon even moderately.)

Loose Change confidently asserts that the Twin Towers were brought down by carefully placed demolition charges, not by the fires ignited by the planes that hit them; that the Pentagon was struck by a cruise missile and not by a plane at all; and that the fourth "hijacked" plane, Flight 93, did not crash in a field in Pennsylvania but landed at the Cleveland airport, where the passengers were taken into a NASA building and never seen again.

What about all the calls the passengers on Flight 93 made on their phones? Their voices were cloned by the Los Alamos laboratories and the calls to their relatives were faked. The FBI was in on it, the CIA was in on it, the U.S. Air Force was in on it (except, of course, those USAF personnel who were killed at the Pentagon), and North American Aerospace Defence Command was in on it (but they kept the Canadians in NORAD out of the loop).

The security companies guarding the World Trade Center were in on it, Mayor Rudy Giuliani was in on it, the Federal Aviation Administration was in on it, NASA was in on it and the Pentagon was in on it. At least 10,000 people were in on it. They had to be, or it couldn't have worked. (These three paragraphs are ridiculous and do not reflect how an operation on this scale would have happened. By necessity, the alleged operation would have have been heavily compartmentalized. Even participants in the Official Conspiracy Theory were likely unaware of the operational details of the whole enchilada. 10,000? No, a small crack team of 20 for the demolitions working incrementally over a span of time. NORAD out of the loop because of War Games. The black ops team “hijacks” one of the War Games of 9/11 and injects the hijacker patsies into the situation. A drill goes live. No complicity required. (See Webster Griffin Tarpley on that.) No one that isn’t part of the op is “in” on it. Well over 10,000 Americans kept their mouths shut about the secret preparation of the Atomic Bomb throughout WWII. The Military Industrial Complex never uttered a word about Northwoods. They still don’t talk about OPERATION GLADIO. Look it up Dyer. What if phone calls were part of the Op to emphasize the “live” quality of the War Game, Dyer?)

And more than five years later, not one of them has talked. Nobody has got drunk and spilled their guts. Nobody has told their spouse, who then blabbed. Not one of these 10,000 accomplices to mass murder has yielded to the temptation of instant fame if only they blow the whistle on the greatest conspiracy in history. (I’m saying your 10,000 number is bogus, and would YOU talk if you were part of it?)

In normal times you wouldn't waste your breath arguing with people who fall for this kind of rubbish, but the makers of Loose Change claim that their film has already been seen by over 100 million people, and looking at my e-mail in-tray, I believe them.

It is a real problem, because by linking their fantasies about 9/11 to the Bush administration's deliberate deception of the American people in order to gain support for the invasion of Iraq, they bring discredit on the truth.

You almost wonder if they are secretly working for the Bush administration.

(But that’s just it isn’t it? We don’t know the truth about 9/11, because it has been the most obfuscated investigation into an act of terrorism that I can think of. Some would disagree and say that the first World Trade Center bombing is even more suspect, because an FBI informant was deeply involved in the plot. Recently, Terry Nichols has come forward to say that Timothy McVeigh was helped along the way by an FBI operative. ABLE DANGER put the finger on al Qaeda operatives involved in 9/11 according to sworn testimony by Anthony Shaffer, but nothing was done. Why is that, Dyer? Why did the 9/11 Commission omit it? How about some recognition on your part that “al Qaeda” exists as a direct result of the CIAs proxy war in Afghanistan? That “countergangs” are being deployed in Iraq to foment ethnic hatred. Why was Robert Wright stopped from following the money? Why does the 9/11 Commission say there is nothing to worry about regarding insider trading prior to 9/11 when independent professional economists disagree?

Why are you so quick with the easy insults? We’re “insane” with “rotting brains” a “real problem” a “virus”. That sounds more like propaganda than anything I saw or heard in Loose Change.

The “real problem”, Dyer, is staid, stale thought patterns like yours, unable to contemplate the worst. Absolutely committed to perpetuating the story that was quickly built on the very day of 9/11 despite any serious amount of hard evidence that can be publicly verified.

9/11 skepticism is more of an “anti-virus”.)

Oh yeah!

Gwynne Dyer says so! If indeed 9/11 was a complex psychological operation designed to trigger a knee-jerk fascist military response to initiate the “Global War on Terror” – then the “real crimes” that Dyer alludes to are a bunch of bat-squeeze by comparison. It’s not “obsession” it’s a mass awakening via the new medium of the internet. Deal with it.)
Well said !

Knock out punch

by Reprehensor. First David Ray Griffin (addressing Monbiot), now Reprehensor. A great 1-2 against the shallow inside-the-boxers.

Do we have access to this person?

I hope there is a way to get Reprehensor's critique into the hands of the author himself. Does Mr. Dyer provide any email contact, or comment contact somehow? Does he have an editor that we (=you, Reprehensor) could send this to?

Gwynne Dyer @

On his site(s) below, Dyer titles his article "Loose Screws." The two reprints that I saw did not use this title.

http://www.gwynnedyer.net

http://www.gwynnedyer.ca

http://www.gwynnedyer.com

WHOIS for the first two of the above finds:

gwynnedyer@gmail.com

--
The true threat to liberty comes not from terrorists but from our political leaders whose natural inclination is to seize upon any excuse to diminish them.
~~ Walter Williams, Nightly Business Report, September 2001

Gwynne Dyer email address

gwynnedyer@gmail.com

Since I no longer care whether such pos ever change their minds about anything whatsoever, I reminded him that he is a coward.

The incredible thing about such denial

as exhibited by Dyer is that it is built entirely on conjecture over what he *thinks* is possible, not on any of the contested evidence.

Moreover, I'm always surprised by the *coincidences* people like Dyer don't see. They don't think it's at all suspicious that 9/11 happened on the watch of the neocons, who were dreaming of such an event for years prior, and not on the watch of Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton or a president who had not expressed an interest in unilateral expansion.

They don't think it's suspicious that the alleged culprit has familial ties with the current president's family. (I mean, honestly, of all the terrorists in all the CIA-sponsored organizations in all the world...)

They don't think it's suspicious that Henry Kissinger was first tapped to direct the investigation.

They don't blink when, on the same day, four hijackings are successfully executed by men with boxcutters and faulty visas, ten of whom were identified by the CAPPS early warning system, and three of whom executed incredibly difficult aerial maneuvers after practicing on a PC flight simulator, and three steel-reinforced skyscrapers collapsed from fire for the first time in history.

And yet they can't fathom how a criminal network of a few people within a government of hundreds of thousands would plant some bombs in the World Trade Center.

I wrote him a message

I wonder if he can possibly read his email, given that the address is known publically?

Anyway, I hope so. I sent it -- and I basically used the text of your message here, simovac; thanks.

I started like this: "I am writing as a friend and admirer, although you do not have any way to know me. I have admired your work over the years."

You know why? I want the guy to read it.

If he does, who knows... it might help.