posted
Each time I lecture abroad on the Middle East, there is always someone in the audience just one whom I call the "raver". Apologies here to all the men and women who come to my talks with bright and pertinent questions often quite humbling ones for me as a journalist and which show that they understand the Middle East tragedy a lot better than the journalists who report it. But the "raver" is real. He has turned up in corporeal form in Stockholm and in Oxford, in Sao Paulo and in Yerevan, in Cairo, in Los Angeles and, in female form, in Barcelona. No matter the country, there will always be a "raver".
His or her question goes like this. Why, if you believe you're a free journalist, don't you report what you really know about 9/11? Why don't you tell the truth that the Bush administration (or the CIA or Mossad, you name it) blew up the twin towers? Why don't you reveal the secrets behind 9/11? The assumption in each case is that Fisk knows that Fisk has an absolute concrete, copper-bottomed fact-filled desk containing final proof of what "all the world knows" (that usually is the phrase) who destroyed the twin towers. Sometimes the "raver" is clearly distressed. One man in Cork screamed his question at me, and then the moment I suggested that his version of the plot was a bit odd left the hall, shouting abuse and kicking over chairs.
Usually, I have tried to tell the "truth"; that while there are unanswered questions about 9/11, I am the Middle East correspondent of The Independent, not the conspiracy correspondent; that I have quite enough real plots on my hands in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Iran, the Gulf, etc, to worry about imaginary ones in Manhattan. My final argument a clincher, in my view is that the Bush administration has screwed up everything militarily, politically diplomatically it has tried to do in the Middle East; so how on earth could it successfully bring off the international crimes against humanity in the United States on 11 September 2001?
Well, I still hold to that view. Any military which can claim as the Americans did two days ago that al-Qa'ida is on the run is not capable of carrying out anything on the scale of 9/11. "We disrupted al-Qa'ida, causing them to run," Colonel David Sutherland said of the preposterously code-named "Operation Lightning Hammer" in Iraq's Diyala province. "Their fear of facing our forces proves the terrorists know there is no safe haven for them." And more of the same, all of it untrue.
Within hours, al-Qa'ida attacked Baquba in battalion strength and slaughtered all the local sheikhs who had thrown in their hand with the Americans. It reminds me of Vietnam, the war which George Bush watched from the skies over Texas which may account for why he this week mixed up the end of the Vietnam war with the genocide in a different country called Cambodia, whose population was eventually rescued by the same Vietnamese whom Mr Bush's more courageous colleagues had been fighting all along.
But here we go. I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11. It's not just the obvious non sequiturs: where are the aircraft parts (engines, etc) from the attack on the Pentagon? Why have the officials involved in the United 93 flight (which crashed in Pennsylvania) been muzzled? Why did flight 93's debris spread over miles when it was supposed to have crashed in one piece in a field? Again, I'm not talking about the crazed "research" of David Icke's Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster which should send any sane man back to reading the telephone directory.
I am talking about scientific issues. If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the twin towers whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C would snap through at the same time? (They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.) What about the third tower the so-called World Trade Centre Building 7 (or the Salmon Brothers Building) which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint at 5.20pm on 11 September? Why did it so neatly fall to the ground when no aircraft had hit it? The American National Institute of Standards and Technology was instructed to analyse the cause of the destruction of all three buildings. They have not yet reported on WTC 7. Two prominent American professors of mechanical engineering very definitely not in the "raver" bracket are now legally challenging the terms of reference of this final report on the grounds that it could be "fraudulent or deceptive".
Journalistically, there were many odd things about 9/11. Initial reports of reporters that they heard "explosions" in the towers which could well have been the beams cracking are easy to dismiss. Less so the report that the body of a female air crew member was found in a Manhattan street with her hands bound. OK, so let's claim that was just hearsay reporting at the time, just as the CIA's list of Arab suicide-hijackers, which included three men who were and still are very much alive and living in the Middle East, was an initial intelligence error.
But what about the weird letter allegedly written by Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian hijacker-murderer with the spooky face, whose "Islamic" advice to his gruesome comrades released by the CIA mystified every Muslim friend I know in the Middle East? Atta mentioned his family which no Muslim, however ill-taught, would be likely to include in such a prayer. He reminds his comrades-in-murder to say the first Muslim prayer of the day and then goes on to quote from it. But no Muslim would need such a reminder let alone expect the text of the "Fajr" prayer to be included in Atta's letter.
Let me repeat. I am not a conspiracy theorist. Spare me the ravers. Spare me the plots. But like everyone else, I would like to know the full story of 9/11, not least because it was the trigger for the whole lunatic, meretricious "war on terror" which has led us to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and in much of the Middle East. Bush's happily departed adviser Karl Rove once said that "we're an empire now we create our own reality". True? At least tell us. It would stop people kicking over chairs.
posted
Anyone who honestly believes that 9/11 was a conspiracy is a demented lunatic. This is a person who has consumed so much Koolaide there is no hope for them. Elvis is alive in Hawaii, President Kennedy was shot from the grassy knoll etc. The wing nuts who believe this stuff are always out there.
Posts: 1023 | From: The spirit of Horemheb lives within us all | Registered: May 2007
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posted
I thought Fisk's article was courageous enough. The man is a thoughtful, fair journalist not afraid to ask thoughtful if not uncomfortable questions.
I share your feelings on this subject American Hammer... most of the time. However, like Fisk, there are nagging questions and circumstances that don't fit together neatly.
First and foremost, that 9/11 lent the enormous opportunity that Bush and Co. seized to move forward with the neoconservative agenda. Clearly, it has failed, whether 9/11 was inspired and carried out by evil, secret American conspirators or evil, crazy Muslims.
Posts: 407 | From: USA | Registered: Jan 2007
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posted
Of which I might add, IF there was any secret conspiracy, it does not relieve the Muslim world of its accountability in this regard. In the remote chance the CIA or Mossaad was involved, they simply were able to manipulate and carry through the attacks that were already being planned by Bin Laden.
Posts: 407 | From: USA | Registered: Jan 2007
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posted
Well humanist, I have heard all sorts of crazy things in my life but this is the nuttiest out there. You have two groups of people pushing this silly conspiracy idea. One is the wild extreme American left who will say anything to attack the government. The other is made up of radical anti american muslims who have to do anything they can to defend their blood thirsty fascist philosophy.
I noted you used the term "neoconservative" in a negative way. That term has been hijacked by the looney left and given some sort of sinister application. What it actually refers to is conservatives who accept an expanded role by the federal government in terms of a social safety net for the poor. Prior to the 60's conservatives consistently opposed those programs and thus 'neo' conservatives represented a chance, in fact a more 'liberal' change. President Bush did not NEED 9/11 to launch his attack in Iraq and Afghanistan. The battle building in the middle east was going to come no matter what anyone did. It is a historical process that cannot be halted until it is resolved. It has nothing to do with democrats, republicans, neoconservatives or anything of the like. Its a war caused by the divergent interests of two groups of people and it will continue until one side wins and the other is defeated.
History will treat President Bush and Tony Blair very well because this war will continue long after they are gone. Your reference to a neoconservative agenda ignores the fact that Tony Blair is hardly a conservative, neo or otherwise.
Posts: 1023 | From: The spirit of Horemheb lives within us all | Registered: May 2007
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posted
I use neoconservative to label people like Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard and the ilk of Paul Wolfowitz, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and co. The New America policy which basically pushed for military dominion over the rest of the world.
You and I do not share the same values about self interest...We must share this world, Hammer and its resources...it is prudent that we find a way to share them peacefully and morally. That doesn't mean we have to submit to being a doormat...America can be a sleeping giant...if someone wakes her with an unprovoked and unjust attack...than her wrath can and should be felt...
It is wrong to suggest that self interest comes above all else. Otherwise I'll just use the argument it is in our self interest, due to the threat of terrorism and other forms of antiAmerican sentiment, to become, once again, to a country of universal principles.
Posts: 407 | From: USA | Registered: Jan 2007
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posted
The REALITY is that self interest does come before all else. Self interest is the basic tenent all all international relations constructs and has been since the beginning of civilized structure. The almost 200 nations in the world ALL gear their foreign policy based on self interest. Secondly, the people you mentioned ARE nOT and never have been trying to create global military dominance. The American Empire, and it is a global empire, is based on trade and economics. We could easily do without mideast oil but our trading partners could not. The job of keeping the oil flowing falls to us because we are the nation with the power to do so. In fact, you could make the case that we are fighting Europe's war in the middle east. Lets be realistic...if there were no oil we would not be there.
In my view those of you who oppose the war misread the seriousness and the depth of the problem in the region. If we left the problem would not improve, it would simply get worse. Utopian, Chamberlainian solutions will not stop the region from exploding. This war will get much bigger and bloodier than it is now. We are confronted with an evil, fascist force that butchers men , women and childern in the name of God. They number in the tens of millions and they are not interested in talking to you, I or anyone else in the west.
Posts: 1023 | From: The spirit of Horemheb lives within us all | Registered: May 2007
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