JWL.Freakwitch.net

Opportunism, Lies and Wars

Where to begin.

I've been thinking more about 9/11, and about how the official story of the buildings collapse -- that the twin towers, along with building 7, collapsed due to structural damage from the plane impact and the heat from the fires which melted the steel supports -- just don't make sense and clearly do not hold up to scrutiny.

And of course, this event was instrumental in swaying public opinion to support the BuShite "war on terrorism." Given the drive of the BuShites toward war, it is no dramatic leap in logic to conclude that the BuShites were interested in opportunism when it comes to Nine-Eleven(tm).

So what if Nine-Eleven is a lie? Or at least, the explanation of Nine-Eleven(tm) is a lie? To put this into context, we must look at the long, rich history linking government lies and wars.

Let us begin -- for the sake of brevity -- at the dawn of the 20th century.

On February 15, 1898, the USS Maine exploded in the Havana harbor in Cuba. The popular media at the time blamed the Spanish forces, despite warnings from military commanders in the area to look at all possible explanations before blaming an enemy for a premeditated attack. These commanders were lambasted in the media for "ignoring the obvious" conclusion that Spain was The New Enemy. "Remember the Maine" became a rallying cry in the US, and the Spanish-American War was launched. Later, it was shown that the USS Maine exploded due to coal dust mishandling. So: a mistruth about a violent event swayed public opinion into a frenzy in favor of war.

On February 27, 1933, a fire broke out in Berlin at the Reichstag building, which was the German house of Parliament. Hitler immediately used this occasion to seize power; he blamed the Communists, creating the local culture of fear and the imagined enemy of the time, was able to have himself appointed chancellor, and repealed many of the human rights provisions of the Weimar Republic (the government of Germany at the time, in place since the end of WWI). After the fact, of course, well after Hitler seized power, The Communists(tm) were acquitted in starting the fire, but by then it was too late. All of Europe and much of Asia were involved in a huge war that ended up killing millions of people. So: a mistruth about a violent event swayed public opinion into a frenzy in favor of war.

December 7, 1941, "A Day That Will Live In Infamy." The popular story goes that there was a surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But of course, years after the attack it was revealed that the US government wasn't at all surprised; not only were they aware that the Japanese were planning to attack Pearl Harbor, they knew the location and trajectory of the fleet. After the attack, public opinion swayed in favor of war with Japan, and by extension Germany, and the US plunged almost gleefully into war. So: a mistruth about a violent event swayed public opinion into a frenzy in favor of war.

The Vietnam war is a bit more complicated, because for the first time we have a unique motive for war. And I don't mean halting the spread of communism. I mean the creation since the cold war of the military industrial complex in the US; huge, vast corporations, so huge and such a threat to freedom and peace that Eisenhower warned the American people in his Farewell Address to the nation:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

There had been skirmishes in Vietnam for years, and there were a handful of American troops in the area. And there is evidence that Kennedy was going to reduce American involvement in Vietnam in the summer of 1963. Soon after, Kennedy was dead, and Lyndon Johnson was in power. Beginning in 1964, American involvement in Vietnam began to steadily and rapidly increase.

Which brings us to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The Johnson administration warned the US about the dangers of The Enemy(tm) in the Gulf of Tonkin, attacking (or imminently attacking) US forces there on or around August 4, 1964. He used this phantom menace to escalate US involvement, passing the Gulf of Tonkin resolution on August 7th, which gave Johnson the unprecedented executive authority "to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force" to assist allies in Southeast Asia, without a formal Congressional declaration of war. It turns out, of course, that there was no threat. So: a mistruth about a violent event swayed public opinion into a frenzy in favor of war.

In October, 1990, a young girl, identified as a Kuwaiti nurse, appeared in Washington before the House of Representatives' Human Rights Caucus, tearfully claiming that Iraqi soldiers had ripped hundreds of premature babies from their incubators, leaving them to die on the cold floor. This story was carried by the US media, pounded into our heads, with Bush Sr using it to emphasize the need to deal wtih the Baghdad Butcher and get him out of power. A huge outcry followed, and America marched to war. It turned out that this girl was actually the 15 year old daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, who had been trained in acting, and that the story was a complete and utter fabrication. So: a mistruth about a violent event swayed public opinion into a frenzy in favor of war.

A dozen years later, of course, we have the nonsense about WMDs in Iraq, that according to the Downing Street Memos turned out to be lies. Not "intelligence failures," but utter, premeditated deceptions hoisted on the American public and the world. This is so well-documented that I won't go into detail, but once again, a mistruth about a violent event swayed public opinion into a frenzy in favor of war.

So with this context, where does that leave us in terms of the "official" explanation that 3 huge steel buildings were toppled solely by airplane fuel? Does the fact that NOT ONE steel skyscraper has ever collapsed due to fire, ever in the history of metallurgy, not once, zero, zilch, nada, enter into anyone's mind?

Does the fact that all three buildings that collapsed behaved much more like controlled demolitions than chaotic destruction from airplane fuel splattered thousands of feet in the air make sense to anyone?

That countless witnesses observed controlled detonations, explosions perfectly in sync going off in sequence all the way down the building?

It's nonsense. It defies common sense. I'm not by any means claiming that I know what happened, but these official explanations make less sense than the magic bullet theory of the Warren Commission explaining JFK's murder.

And finally, "credible academics" are getting into the act. Perhaps the most intriguing to me is David Ray Griffin, who before he retired was one of the pre-eminent scholars of Alfred North Whitehead, who happens to be one of my favorite philosophers.

A new one is Steven E. Jones, a professor of engineering at BYU, who has recently caused controversy by publishing a detailed examination of why the buildings collapsed.

He indicates the overwhelming evidence supporting the notion that these were controlled demolitions that brought down the buildings, and then asks perhaps the most pertinent question about motive:

Why would terrorists undertake straight-down collapses of WTC7 and the Towers, when "toppling-over" falls would require much less work and would do much more damage in downtown Manhattan? And where would they obtain the necessary skills and access to the buildings for a symmetrical implosion anyway?

If the buildings were demolished in a controlled way, and the evidence is overwhelming that this is so, it makes no sense to assume that these highly skilled procedures would have been carried out by terrorists, who would have had a motive to destroy as much as possible. If indeed the towers came down because of heat from airplane, the likelihood that they would have fallen straight down, collapsing on themselves, in all three cases is so tiny to be negligible.

This implies that the destruction of the towers was carried out by someone other than Saudi Arabian boxcutter-wielding terrorists.

The question is, who?

I have no idea who did it, but I know who benefitted from it, and I know who has carried out acts such as these before. And I need look no further than my own government.

posted by JWL at 1:29 PM |