9/11 explains the impotence of the antiwar movement

Online Journal has the essay

By Paul Craig Roberts

The antiwar movement has proven impotent to stop the war in Iraq despite the fact that the war was initiated on the basis of lies and deception.

The antiwar movement stands helpless to prevent President Bush from attacking Iran or any other country that he might demonize for harboring a future 9/11 threat.

September 11 enabled Bush to take America to war and to keep America at war even though the government’s explanation of the events of September 11 is mired in controversy and disbelieved by a large percentage of the population.

Although the news media’s investigative arm has withered, other entities and individuals continue to struggle with unanswered questions. In the six years since 9/11, numerous distinguished scientists, engineers, architects, intelligence officers, pilots, military officers, air traffic controllers, and foreign dignitaries have raised serious and unanswered questions about the official story line.

Recognition of the inadequacy of the official account of the collapse of the twin towers is widespread in the scientific and technical community. One of the most glaring failures in the official account is the lack of an explanation of the near free-fall speed at which the buildings failed once the process began. Some scientists and engineers have attempted to bolster the official account with explanations of how this might happen in the absence of explosives used in controlled demolitions.

One recent example is the work of Cambridge University engineer Dr. Keith Seffen published in the Journal of Engineering Mechanics and reported by the BBC on September 11, 2007. Dr. Seffen constructed a mathematical model that concludes that once initiation of failure had begun, progressive collapse of the structures would be rapid.

Another example is the work of retired government scientist Dr. Manuel Garcia, commissioned by CounterPunch to fill the gaping void in the official report. Garcia concludes, as does Seffen, that explosives are not necessary to explain the near free-fall speed at which the WTC buildings collapsed.

Seffen and Garcia each offer a speculative hypothesis about what could have happened. Their accounts are not definitive explanations based on evidence of what did happen. Thus, Seffen and Garcia bring us to the crux of the matter: To understand the buildings’ failures, we must rely on theoretical speculative models, because the forensic evidence was not examined. Their explanations thus have no more validity than a speculative hypothesis that explains the failure of the buildings as a result of explosives.

To rationally choose between the hypotheses, we would need to see how well each fits with the evidence, but most of the evidence was quickly dispersed and destroyed by federal authorities. Most of the evidence that remains consists largely of human testimony: the hundred witnesses who were inside the two towers and who report hearing and experiencing explosions and the televised statement of Larry Silverstein, the leaseholder of the WTC properties, who clearly said that the decision was made "to pull" WTC 7.

Today, six years after 9/11, money, ideologies, accumulated resentments, and political careers are all allied with the official story line on 9/11. Anyone on a Republican mailing list or a conservative activist list, such as Young Americans for Freedom, knows that fundraising appeals seldom fail to evoke the 9/11 attack on America. The 9/11 attacks gave neoconservatives their "new Pearl Harbor" that enabled them to implement their hegemonic agenda in the Middle East. The 9/11 attacks gave Americans boiling with accumulated frustrations a foe upon whom to vent their rage. Politicians, even Democrats, could show that they stood tall for America. George W. Bush has invested two presidential terms in "fighting terror" by invading countries in the Middle East.

September 11 doubters are a threat to the legitimacy of these massive material and emotional interests. That is why they are shouted down as "conspiracy theorists." But if the government’s story has to be improved by outside experts in order to be plausible, then it is not irrational or kooky to doubt the official explanation.

Elements of the American left-wing are also frustrated by 9/11 doubters. CounterPunch, for example, views 9/11 as blowback from an immoral US foreign policy and as retribution for America’s past sins in the Middle East. Manuel Garcia shares this viewpoint. In the September 12, 2007, CounterPunch, Garcia writes that "rationalists and realists" are people who see 9/11 "as blowback from decades of inhuman US foreign policy." Viewing 9/11 as a government conspiracy, whether in deed or cover-up, lets US foreign policy off the hook.

This is a legitimate point of view. But it has a downside. September 11 was the excuse for committing yet more inhuman deeds by initiating open-ended wars on both Muslims and US civil liberties. Defending the government’s account, instead of pressing the government for accountability, was liberating for the Bush administration.

Even in the official account, the story is one of massive failures: the failures of US intelligence services, the failures of airport security, the failures to intercept the hijacked airliners, the failures to preserve evidence. If a common front had taken the Bush administration to task both for failing to prevent the 9/11 attacks and for an explanation of 9/11 so inadequate that its plausibility depends on outside experts, Bush could not have so easily shifted the blame to Afghanistan and Iraq. Most 9/11 doubters do not insist on the US government’s complicity in the deed. Failure to protect, or incompetence, is a sufficient charge to deter an administration from war by turning it against itself with demands for accountability.

But no one was held accountable for 9/11 except Muslim countries. This is the reason the antiwar movement is impotent.

Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

great article. PCR is great

great article. PCR is great for people who are still on the fence.

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." ~ William Colby, Former Director, CIA

Where will exposure of 9/11 Truth take us?

I have recently been challenged by one of the "blow back" advocates (topic mentioned above) to explain how 9/11 Truth activities are advancing the anti-war movement. Although intuitively I believe it to be the linchpin issue, when it comes down to articulating a vision how it might all pan out, to the advantage of the anti-war, anti-empire advocate (us!), I am not so clear. So I am trying to organize my thoughts as to how we might succeed, how long it will take us to succeed, what obstacles are likely to thwart us, and so on. For instance, could we reasonably expect the 9/11 perpetrators, whoever they may be, hauled up to court, if it turns out that there was black ops involvement for U.S. forces (my own personal belief)? Could we reasonably expect to make more progress than has been done with the JFK assassination and so on? What would it take to actually get a fair and unbiased 9/11 investigation? Would it matter? Apparently the conclusion by the House Select Committee on Assassinations that the JFK shooting WAS a conspiracy has vanished into the memory hole. If it went to court, how could we avoid it becoming a farce, with competing experts confusing the hell out of the jurors? This was Mike Ruppert's fear. What level of public outrage would it take to crash pass the gatekeepers, left and right, main stream media, professional level disinformation, COINTELPRO, political cowardice (maybe with good reason), and guilty parties on both sides of the body politic? We know that the level of anti-war sentiment is very high, we know that a sizable minority favor impeachment, and yet nothing happens with regards to anti-war and pro-impeachment efforts by the Democrats.

So, how is this all supposed to work? I we get 50% of the people (perhaps achievable) believing that LIHOP at least is most probable, will it result in any movement towards 9/11 Truth goals? If we get 60% (probably not achievable), is it enough to even get a new commission? If we get a new commission, how can we have any guarantee that it will not be the same farce as the first?

Too many questions, I know, but it we can't at least have some plausible answers, then we may be a bunch of Don Quixotes. Perhaps these answers are on the web in consolidated and coherent form somewhere. If so will someone point me in the right direction?

Mike Zimmer
http://www.TheProgressiveMind.info

A new 9/11 investigation

Mike, I believe that 9/11 truth adds incredible potency to the anti-war movement by allowing us to counter the current (and probably last) justification for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: fear of al-Qaeda and 9/11. Without widespread 9/11 truth, advocates for the war can spread fear of what happened on 9/11 and the possibility of it happening again. 9/11 truth makes us immune to that bullshit and widespread 9/11 truth will make it impossible for the wars to continue.

How we can avoid a new 9/11 investigation from becoming another farce?
The difference is us!
9/11 bloggers, families, students, architects, engineers, veterans, pilots, patriots, and scholars for 9/11 truth are all here now and were not available for any of the Kennedy investigations.
I can't imagine how a credible investigatory body can do it's job without dealing with the thousands of unanswered questions, (many from 9/11 families), and questions from the likes of David Ray Griffin and Richard Gage.

Once the public gets a hint of complicity of members of our government they will NOT ignore the results. A new investigation will NOT go down the memory hole!

-------------

How did CNN and BBC have foreknowledge of the WTC7 collapse, yet six years later, the government cannot explain it?

and don't forget

us foriegners who have had our lives devasted becuase of the 911 lie.
The Truth movement is international.

Mike, The 9/11 Truth

Mike, The 9/11 Truth Movement helps the anti-war cause by undermining the central historical basis for the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and, indeed, of the whole so-called "Global War on Terror." We have already spent over 2 TRILLION on the latter, and the ostensible reason for this were the events of 9/11, so it seems reasonable that We the People ought to know what, exactly, happened that day. Otherwise we are little more than slaves, forced to foot the bill for an endless "War on Terror" that we do not understand and cannot even fathom the nature of.

At a more basic level, Truth has inherent value, regardless of what it leads to politically. Will we get a real investigation and justice for the perpetrators? Well, looking at history, I doubt that very much, unless we have a REVOLUTION. Does that mean our work is in vain? Not at all! When the oligarchs start trying to round dissidents up on trumped up "terrorism" charges, and declare martial law, our work may well determine whether they succeed in establishing a totalitarian state or not. I am not a military man, but many in the armed forces might not go along with the oligarchy's agenda, and their exposure to the truth of Nine Eleven may well be what makes the difference.

Your Postings on Dissedent Voice!!

Hi Mike, I read some to the exchange there and the following is what I posted; it is waiting for the moderator.

Blowback is simplistic and in a way self defeating.

For some of us who have kept a mental log of all major terrorism attacks since 1973, we were almost shaking three months prior to 9/11 and saying, what is that idiot in the White House doing or not doing, the atmosphere is ripe for a major terrorism attack.

Terrorists do not operate in a vacuum, as we all know, 9/11 was in the works for a good amount of time before it was executed; terrorists wait for the right atmosphere, the maximum potential audience, before they execute their operation and Bush gave them that.

Bush was doing nothing to advance peace in the middle east, he was actually standing on the side of Sharon and Israel in their dismantling of the Oslo Accord.

Anyway, 9/11 is not blowback because there is evidence the U.S. had advanced knowledge of it, and very likely aided Al-Qaeda in executing it.

Many try to prove it through the attacks on WTC and Pentagon, but the government hauled away the evidence very quickly in order to prevent any forensic reconstruction, ergo, leaving us with theories that can be brushed away as conspiracy theories.

So, what is the evidence that proves Bush administration complicity? it is incidents that took place in a small village in Afghanistan on September 26, 2001 and November 2, 2001 that inadvertently provide us with the proof that the Bush administration is complicit.

The following is the link to an article “The Hijacking of a Terrorism Plot!”
http://muckrakerreport.com/id487.html

As the writer of that article, feel free to contact me with any questions you may have.

Best to all,
Maher Osseiran

Let us not forget

...the famous public daily briefing from August 6th, 2001 that took so long to declasify. It stated "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." And it specified how there were "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York. "

And yet this president had the audacity to say when he "saw" the first plane strike (which is suspicious in itself considering video of the 1st plane crash wasn't available until a day later) that he thought of it as "one bad pilot." And as per Condosleeza Rice, it was "historical" information.

Caught in the lie. At the very least, this indicates a LIHOP pattern of behavior.

Maybe having lived through the 1993 bombing of the WTC and Oaklahoma City, I felt myself saying immediately that the 1st plane strike was no accident.

Here's the link to the PDB from 8/6/01 - http://www.agonist.org/annex/pdb.htm

Paul, no! Silverstein "pull it" is out of context false claim!

Paul,

This quote should not be up front as "evidence" of Silverstein's complicity. This claim could be disinformation, as it is clearly taken out of context -- and disputed by Silverstein himself -- and makes no sense whatsoever in the way "truthers" claim.

Full article.
Tales of 9/11 Truthiness

This is a weak claim for the following reasons and more:

1. Silverstein was talking in an interview for national tv. What motivation would he have to "confess" to anything voluntarily like that? None, whatsoever.

2. He was talkking to the NY Fire Department Commander. NYFD doesn't blow up buildings! The purported exchange that Silverstein, on the morning of 9-11, "ordered" the NY city fire department to demolish his building is nonsensical. It couldn't have happened that way, of course.

3. Given that it couldn't have happened as the out of context quote is used, what does the quote mean? It means "pull" the "firefighting operation." Period. We know that happened. It is easily explained, and conforms to known facts, as well as being what Silverstein later explained.

This is misdirection. We are being told to look at the wrong things, and thus use up our time following hollow, useless leads. This Silverstein quote must be put to rest. That conversation didn't mean what the bulk of "truthers" claims it meant.

It avoids looking at Silverstein's actual role as purchaser of the complex, with control over security there all summer. Silverstein's connections to Netanyahu and Sharon. Silverstein's handsome profit of $5 billion when he only put up $15 million of his own money in the first place!

This is a mine, in a large minefield of seeming anomalies that are actually not.

70 Disturbing Facts About 9/11

John Doraemi publishes Crimes of the State Blog
http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/

johndoraemi --at-- yahoo.com.

Hey John, nice to hear from you again.

I do agree with you John.

Paul Craig Roberts is new to the area of 9/11 and learning at a quick pace what many of us have spent now close to six years looking into.

I very much welcome his writings on the topic, he is going to make mistakes but he is going to also learn.
I welcome him because I have read many of his articles on many topics and he is a person who seems to have the interest of this country at heart.

I suspect he joined the 9/11 debate because he genuinely believes that getting the truth out about 9/11 is what will put this country back on the right track.

In peace,
Maher Osseiran

Oh c'mon

The man said it on national TV. To hypothesize state of mind try "An Overlooked Explanation" at http://www.wtc7.net/pullit.html

Other planes did not make their targets. An inside criminal player tried to wing it for the cameras.

Yes, insurance scamming is important too. It's just that when the gods drop a gold nugget like this, don't ignore it.

Speaking of gold, the billions in gold bullion stored in WTC vaults is a vastly under-reported aspect of the crime, see 8thestate.com.

I disagree with your premise

Neither the current "anti-war movement", nor the 9/11 Truth and Justice Movement, nor any other movement(s), have been able to "stop the war".

To look at it as a failing on anyone's part is incorrect, imo, and not a valid viewpoint, or representation. (although you can impart blame at everyone's feet, in one or more ways, to some level or degree, such as the MSM, each of us as individuals, etc., but not in a solely "singled out way")

The chances of anyone or anything at "stopping the war" is pretty much slim to none, except in the collective sense, with some unknown amount of passage of time. When the war is stopped, which it will be eventually, at some point, it will be because it was opposed by so many people, as individuals, and groups, and agencies, and the military itself, etc., until it hits the required level of nonacceptance.

Putting the fault for not stopping it at anyone's feet is fallacious. As is calling them impotent. (as an absolute, or near-absolute)

And implying, suggesting, or outright stating, that the current "anti-war movement" has not done anything to get us as far as we have gotten in stopping the war, however far that is, would also be incorrect and wrong.

----
Senior 9/11 Bureau Chief, Analyst, Correspondent, Principle Investigator, Forensic 9/11ologist

http://www.chico911truth.org/

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny. — Robert Heinlein

Ron Paul hounded about inside job

http://www.ronpaulaudio.com/rpaudio/RonPaulFOXJohnGibson091307.mp3

If Ron Paul would ever say '9/11 was an inside job' it would energize his campaign.

Wow... Those guys interviewing Ron Paul were...

SCUMBAGS...

I've never listened to John Gibson before, damn what a horrid TARD !!!

Ron Paul might not be a 9/11 Truther but he seems a decent guy and at least he's not a lieing fear/warmongering scumbag.

To me he's head and shoulders above the rest of the candidates.

Thanks for the MP3 link, best wishes