The official story of 9/11 is the craziest conspiracy theory of all

All great truths begin as blasphemies.  ~George Bernard Shaw, Annajanska, 1919
August 30, 2010

By Craig McKee

It’s an oft-repeated statement by politicians, military leaders, and commentators that the disaster of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001 changed the world forever. I believe this is true, but not for the reasons the U.S. government would have us believe.
The official story of September 11, as told by the Bush administration and the major media, made it clear that America was now under siege from an increasingly bold and frightening enemy. A major attack had taken place on U.S. soil for the first time since the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and Americans were in shock.
They now had to come to terms with a world in which terror and death were no longer things you watched on TV. Now you could see them first hand, right in the heart of their largest and most iconic city. For the first time they could imagine a catastrophic and senseless act of violence happening to THEM.
And certainly the disaster crystallized in the public consciousness the idea that Islamic extremists were the new evil. Yes, this wasn’t a new idea, but these attacks raised the stakes considerably. And with this new horrifying threat making the future a frighteningprospect, Americans seemed willing to agree to almost anything in the name of security.
Some were suspicious of the official story of 9/11 and raised questions but initially they were a very small minority. Any answers they were given only added to the confusion, and to the suspicion. It seemed that the more we learned, the more the official version of what happened made no sense.
It would be one thing if there were just a few troubling questions about how the attacks unfolded. But there are dozens, if not hundreds, of seriously alarming contradictions and discrepancies. If there are logical and reasonable answers for all of these, then why don’t we get them? If everything is just as the 9/11 Commission Report suggests, then the government must be getting some very bad public relations advice.
Sometimes the answers given are bizarre, while some critical questions raised by doubters are completely ignored. And a good part of the physical evidence that might have answered some of the contentious questions was destroyed before it could be analysed.
So we’re left with huge questions about the official version of events that I plan to address through this blog in the weeks to come. Here are some of the major ones:

• Why were none of the four supposedly hijacked planes intercepted? How could it be that military exercises were taking place on Sept. 11 that diverted fighter planes hundreds of miles away from New York and Washington and caused potential confusion about whether the real hijackings were part of the exercise or not?
• Why did the towers fall at almost freefall speed when they were designed to withstand the impact of several airliners? Why did WTC building 7 collapse in the same way, even though it was not hit by an airplane? And how did television journalists from the BBC report that building 7 had collapsed half an hour BEFORE it did (there is actual footage of the reporter relaying this “fact” with Building 7 still standing in the background!)?
• Why did many witnesses report hearing explosions in the lower levels of the towers – some before the planes hit? Why did video show white smoke coming from the BOTTOM of the towers before the collapse?
• Why were there tons of molten metal under the rubble of both towers and WTC building 7 that was hundreds of degrees hotter than the temperature of burning jet fuel (these fires were not put out until mid-December)?
• How could an inexperienced pilot have executed an almost impossible manoeuvre and flown Flight 77 into a newly reinforced and renovated section of the Pentagon leaving a hole less than 20 feet in diameter? And why was there so little of the plane left? What happened to the wings, and why didn’t they hit the building? Why was the section above the hole intact (until it collapsed 20 minutes after impact) when it should have been hit by the tail section?
• And how could United Flight 93 crash into a Pennsylvania field and leave virtually no wreckage and no bodies? Why did tests of the ground water not show the presence of jet fuel? And how could there be a second debris field six miles away?

I remember driving to work on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. I was working for a weekly newspaper in Montreal, and because it was deadline day, the attacks would require us to remake the news section. My first thought when I heard the initial radio report was that a small private plane had inadvertently hit one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. That impression didn’t last long.
Initially, I was just as willing as anyone to believe that terrorists had pulled off the attacks.  Anything else would be unthinkable. And the government seemed to have it pinned on Osama bin Laden from the beginning. Just like they had the Kennedy assassination pinned on Lee Harvey Oswald from the beginning.
When I heard the story as it was reported that day, one thought struck me more than any other – how could these four planes have done what they did without being stopped? How could America’s defences be so lax? It seemed highly suspicious, but I didn’t know what it meant. It didn’t occur to me at the time that so much of the evidence to support the official story would be so far-fetched.
The 9/11 attacks paved the way for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, they made it possible for the government to ramp up surveillance of private citizens and remove individual liberties at an alarming rate. They further demonized Muslims and created a new personification of evil: Osama bin Laden. And they made a lot of people very rich.
Yes, 9/11 changed everything. That was the idea.
Please let me know what you think. How do you feel about the official story? What, if any, are your doubts?  Click on “comments” at the end of this post and let me know your opinion. There will be many more posts on this subject in the weeks to come. I’ll get more into the details of questions touched on above. I believe it’s essential that we never stop asking these questions – at least not until the truth comes out.