Title: US should put 9/11 to rest with facts
Source: Arab News "The MIDDLE EAST's Leading English Language Daily"
Published: Tuesday 16 March 2010

Url: http://arabnews.com/opinion/columns/article30535.ece

US SHOULD PUT 9/11 TO REST WITH FACTS

Why should any challenge to official version be treated as treachery?

It’s been almost nine years since the Sept. 11 attacks yet questions still remain and accusations keep coming. Last week an influential elected member of Japan’s ruling Democratic Party and head of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs Yukisha Fujita said he believes that 9/11 was perpetrated by shadowy forces within America and then covered-up. He also claims that at least eight of the hijackers are still alive and suggests that The World Trade Center Building 7 was deliberately demolished with explosives.
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Last week, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has regularly characterized 9/11 as a “suspect event,” said the attacks were “a big lie” used by the US to elicit sympathy to pave the way for its entry into Afghanistan. It appears that Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez is on the same page. Just last Tuesday, he suggested that the US government may have orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. In an earlier statement, he agreed with Fujita’s hypothesis that Building 7 had been dynamited.

In September 2003, Tony Blair’s former Minister for the Environment Michael Meacher shocked his former boss and the establishment by writing a column published in The Guardian describing the “War on Terror” as “bogus” and implying that the US government either allowed 9/11 to happen or played a role in it.

Spurious anti-American messages emanating from Ahmadinejad and Chavez are par for the course and can be easily dismissed as baseless barbs. But now that a top Japanese official has doubts about the authorized version of events, shouldn’t these be addressed? The Washington Post thinks not. It has written them off as Fujita’s lunatic fantasies. The problem is that those who accept the official version of events as gospel — feeling that any challenge is tantamount to treachery at worst or is eccentric at best — are unwittingly feeding the conspiracy bandwagon.

I know that for many Americans — and especially New Yorkers — any discussion of that terrible day still hits a raw nerve. And that’s understandable. In the post-9/11 climate it became a real taboo. But there is a genuine need to get at the truth because as several former British ministers recently admitted to the Iraq inquiry, 9/11 changed the world. As they submit, without changed perceptions following Sept. 11, Afghanistan and Iraq would probably not have been invaded. So, one can logically extrapolate that 9/11 resulted in up to one million deaths rather than almost 3,000.

The official 9/11 commission shut up shop in August 2004 after publishing a detailed report on the origins of Al-Qaeda, the events of the day and recommendations on preventing such tragedies in the future. However, the report is unsatisfactory in that it presumes the unproven and neglects to clarify key anomalies.

One of its main flaws is the overall assumption that Osama Bin Laden was the mastermind, which contradicts FBI findings. Bin Laden does appear on its “Most Wanted” site but not in connection with 9/11 because the bureau believes there is not enough hard evidence tying him to that crime.

A message on the FBI’s website reads: Bin Laden “is wanted in connection with the Aug. 7, 1988 bombings of the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya... In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world.”

Even more troubling is the report’s failure to explain why the World Trade Center Building 7 came down seven hours after the attacks when it hadn’t been directly hit. There was, however, an official explanation authorized by Congress in 2004 arrived at by using computer models, detailed analysis and eyewitness accounts. This was simply that Building 7 collapsed due to fires ignited by falling debris from the Twin Towers. This is the first time that we are aware of that a 15-story building collapsing due to fire, said a spokesman for the investigative team.

I’ve always tried to keep an open mind as, frankly, the official tale and the conspiracy theories are equally implausible. On the one hand, it’s hard to believe that elements within the US government would be involved in such a heinous mass murder. Plus, any such conspiracy would have had to involve dozens, if not hundreds, of high-level players sworn to secrecy. It’s hardly feasible that not one of them has sought to speak out until now given the emotion surrounding the attacks and the repercussions they had on the entire world.

The conspiracy theorists would argue that America has been known to concoct false flag operations in the past. Operation Northwoods, for example, called for CIA operatives to commit acts of terrorism and hijack planes so that Cuba would get the blame as a prelude to war. The plan was ultimately rejected by President John F. Kennedy.

For most people, it’s unthinkable that the US could have played any part in 9/11 or knowingly allowed it to happen. But with more and more prominent individuals speaking their minds on the subject to America’s detriment it may be time for the US to silence the ugly slurs. An entirely independent commission on the lines of Britain’s Iraq Inquiry would help; if there is nothing to hide, then why not?

Lastly, if I could have the answer to only one question it is this. How did a man with the same name and face as an alleged hijacker turn up in Casablanca after the attacks when the official story positions him on American Airlines Flight 11 stabbing a stewardess?

The individual in question told the BBC that he had, indeed, attended a flight-training school in Daytona Beach and was the man in the photograph distributed by the FBI. An article on the BBC website dated Sept. 23, 2001 headed “Hijack ‘suspects’ alive” tells the tale. Did someone steal his identity? Did the FBI get it wrong? Did the BBC make a mistake? Inquiring minds would love to know.