9/11 Conspiracy Theory Freaks
In the turbulent winds of the presidential election campaign and the 9/11 congressional investigation, we are blown about from all sides by facts, almost facts, lies, half-truths and, worst of all, conspiracy theories. It is one thing to accuse the much maligned Bush administration of incompetence, fanatical ideology, catering to big business, lying, cheating, aggressive defamation tactics and so forth, all justified accusations, but to accuse them of orchestrating the destruction of the Twin Towers in order to justify a war against Iraq is simply nauseating. There�s a website called �Serendipity� which, in its summing-up of a long fairy tale, says the following
�Some people have said that this account of the events
of September 11th 2001 is "too convoluted to understand".
Actually it's quite simple:
1. Four commercial passenger jets (American Airlines Flights 11 and 77 and United Airlines Flights 93 and 175) take off and shortly after the pilots are ordered to land at a designated airport with a military presence.
2. Two previously-prepared planes (one a Boeing 767, painted up to look like a United Airlines jet and loaded with extra jet fuel) take off and are flown by remote control to intercept the flight paths of AA 11 and UA 175 so as to deceive the air traffic controllers.
3. These (substituted) jets then fly toward Manhattan; the first crashes into the North Tower and (eighteen minutes later) the second crashes into the South Tower.
4. A mock 757, destroyed just before impact, and two or three cruise missiles, hit the Pentagon.
5. The people on three of the Boeings are transferred to the fourth (UA 93).
6. This plane takes off and is shot down by a U.S. Air Force jet over Pennsylvania, eliminating the innocent witnesses to the diversion of the passenger planes.
7. Under cover of darkness later that evening the other three Boeings are flown by remote control out over the Atlantic, are scuttled and end up in pieces at the bottom of the ocean.
Prof. Dewdney concludes his Operation Pearl article thus:
Under the Operation Pearl scenario, the most likely perpetrator would be Mossad, Israel's spy agency. An arm's-length relationship with the Bush administration, with neocon elements acting as go-betweens, would enable Rumsfeld, Bush and other members of the US administration to disclaim any "specific" knowledge of a forthcoming attack.
So it appears that the Bush clique (including neocons Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz) collaborated with the Israeli government to stage the September 11th attacks, with Mossad providing the hands-on direction of the operation. But it is unlikely that Operation Pearl could be carried out entirely by Mossad agents � Americans within the U.S. Air Force and the state security and intelligence agencies had to be involved.�
Quite Simple? Yes indeed, simple
enough for the simple-minded to believe. [Serendipity: �(Coined by Horace
Walpole, after the fairy tale The Three
Prices of Serendip) n.
The happy knack of making unexpected and delightful discoveries by accident.�]
The fact that such nonsensical
�discoveries� are presented as factual on the web nowadays, complete with
illustrations of a mock 767, is not surprising, for, as we all know, there are
a lot of conspiracy theory crackpots out there and anyone can say what they
like on the web, no matter how grotesque and defamatory. What is surprising,
and sad, is that people one knows, who until now you thought reasonably
intelligent, can read this stuff and believe it and call you na�ve if you
don�t. I�ve learned long ago that it�s useless to try and convince such people
otherwise. They aren�t interested in the facts, which they call cover ups, only
what happens in their own dark, paranoid imaginations.
Please do not think that I am
defending Bush & Co. In the article by Joe Conason in this issue of SCR he
synthesizes Richard Clarke�s accusations about the ineptness, ideological
narrow-mindedness and irresponsibility with respect to the 9/11 tragedy. Clarke
was there, he knows, and Conason presents facts as narrated by Clarke. Neither
Clarke nor any other sane critic of this administration even remotely suggests
that they deliberately conspired to destroy the Twin Towers. Or is Clarke also
a part of the conspiracy?
Even if we for one moment entertain
such an idea, we immediately find that it would be technically impossible to
carry out and humanly impossible to keep secret.
The following is an eloquent email reply from a woman of my
acquaintance to someone else who recommended the �Serendipity� site:
�The 9-11 issue is
very personal for me. I lived in the D.C. area and still have family and
friends there who were affected by the Pentagon attack, and a good friend here
who lost family at the WTC.
�
I know for a fact
that a plane went into the Pentagon.
I know for a fact
that the first plane that went into the WTC was reported correctly because a
good friend had an uncle on the plane that went into the 1st tower. This man,
Chuck Jones, 48, from Bedford, MA, with BAE Systems, was a retired
astronautical engineer and manager of space programs. He had his throat slit
open with a box cutter when he rose from his first class seat in response to
the takeover.
How do I know
this? Because, contrary to the nuts publishing the crap that you are forwarded,
there ARE tapes. One tape from that plane is a recording of the conversation
that took place between a hostess on the plane and ground control where she
reported the takeover of the plane and how several people had had their throats
cut with box cutters, including "one military type who was sitting near
the pilot's cabin". The content of this conversation was shared with the
family and this was done within a few days of the tragedy.
Another wacko
website talks about how Ted Olsen is telling nothing but lies about the phone
conversation he had with his wife, Barbara, who was on the plane that went into
the Pentagon. I don't know why Olsen doesn't sue these wacko nuts! How terrible
to put forth such disinformation about a man who lost his wife under such
horrific circumstances! Barbara Olsen called her husband from her cell phone,
not from the credit card phones on the plane, as alleged on one wacko site. She
called not once, but twice, on her cell phone, from her seat. She did not know
about the planes that had hit the WTC and Ted Olsen did not tell his wife that
she was doomed and
there was nothing he could do! This man (who even thought some here might hate
him because he is in the Bush administration) is a human being, a husband only
fairly recently married, who sat and listened to his wife ask for his help as
the television in his office reported the horrors going on, knowing he could do
nothing but hold the phone in his hand and wait for his wife's cell phone to go
silent.�
How horrible that
people would twist and distort such tragedy for their own ideological purposes
based on hate and paranoia. How equally horrible to be able to disconnect one's
imagination from the human tragedy of that day to play out one's ideological
obsessions about their political views, No, there wasn't much of a plane left
in the ruins of that crash, just as there were no bodies to find or bury, not
Barbara Olsen's, nor my oldest friend in the DC area's young friend, nor the
bodies of the D.C. school children going on an awards trip to California.
Paulina"
It won�t do any good to tell that to the 9/11 conspiracy theory
freaks, though. It�s like talking to holocaust deniers; their ignorance of the
real world is too sublime.
Frank Thomas Smith
[email protected]
