| By Administrator on Uncategorized  Cinnamon Stillwell, after reading your lengthy nine eleven article in the San Francisco Chronicle, I was three paragraphs into a blog entry determined to point out the fallacies of your argument—more accurately described as an ill-informed slander piece—but decided instead to write this email to you directly.
I must be honest, Ms. Stillwell. I do not believe I have ever read a more ignorant and slanted piece on nine eleven—and I have read hundreds. I consider your piece akin to crib notes to the nine eleven whitewash commission version. Please take that as a compliment. “Rather than accept that Islamic terrorists flew planes into buildings and slaughtered innocents in the name of a fanatical ideology, the Sept. 11 conspiracy theorists believe the perpetrators included members of their own government—that somehow the Bush administration, with the collusion of the Pentagon, was either behind the attacks or simply allowed them to happen in order to institute a quasi-police state,” you write. “Whatever one’s criticisms of the administration and its approach to the war on terrorism, one would have to be awfully cynical to believe that it would kill or allow thousands (at the least) of Americans to die, simply to accumulate additional powers. But even if one assumes the government acted purely in its own interests, why on earth would it risk weakening the economy and creating instability for the foreseeable future? Not exactly a winning formula for the so-called ruling classes.” I am surprised by your naiveté—well, not exactly, since you describe yourself as a liberal turned conservative, the latter now actually a cover for neocons and wanna-be neocons (real conservatives, such as Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, are alarmed and horrified by what neocons, calling themselves conservatives, are doing to this country—he also does not buy the official version, as your brand of “conservative” does). First and foremost, you may want to enter the phrase “Operation Northwoods” in your Google search engine. Operation Northwoods was a plan by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1963 to launch terror attacks against U.S. soldiers and citizens and blame it on Cuba as a pretext to invade the communist nation. Lucky for us, Robert McNamara and Kennedy turned this insane plan down. But it reveals the capacity and willingness of the government and the military to murder its own citizens. As I write this, we are marking the anniversary of the murder of David Koresh and his followers in Waco, Texas. It is said Koresh burned his own family and followers to death and the FBI had nothing to do with it. And yet the FBI admits firing “potentially flammable devices” into the Davidian “compound,” actually parish living quarters and a church (called Mount Carmel Center). CNN reported this. PBS Frontline reported the fact the BATF fired the first shots at Waco and that Janet Reno, AG under the “liberal” Bill Clinton, gave the order to use CS gas against the men, women, and children at Mount Carmel. The use of CS gas is illegal under the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (enacted the same year as the Waco massacre). As you can see, Ms. Stillwell, our government has killed its own citizens. Of course, such incidents pale in comparison to the mass murder our government has inflicted on Iraqi civilians. “Never mind that the whole country witnessed the horrific sight of planes flying into the World Trade Center, the immediate aftermath of the Pentagon attack and eventually heard the heartrending cell phone calls and cockpit recordings from Flight 93,” you write. “Or that many studies on the twin towers have concluded that jet fuel combined with incredible levels of heat were to blame for their collapse. Or that 7 WTC sustained much more fire damage in the attack than initially reported. Or that there’s no possible way to predict exactly how such a chaotic scenario will play out.” Once again, if you bothered to do any research instead of simply parroting official lies, Ms. Stillwell, you would discover that, in 2001, it was all but impossible to make cell phone calls from an airliner clipping along at 500 miles per hour above 25,000 feet. According to Alexa Graf, a spokesman of AT&T, “it was almost a fluke that the [9/11] calls reached their destinations… From high altitudes, the call quality is not very good, and most callers will experience drops,” and yet the 911 Commission points to the clarity and detail of these telephone conversations. How is that possible, Ms. Stillwell? It seems you will believe any nonsense the government hands out. But where you really show off your astounding ignorance is in the little matter of jet fuel and steel. Kevin Ryan of Underwriters Laboratories, the company that certified the steel components used in the construction of the World Trade Center towers, is baffled. to say the least, over this outrageous and—I don’t know how else to characterize it—immensely stupid assertion. “This story just does not add up. If steel from those buildings did soften or melt, I’m sure we can all agree that this was certainly not due to jet fuel fires of any kind, let alone the briefly burning fires in those towers,” Ryan wrote to Frank Gayle of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. “I think we can all agree that even un-fireproofed steel will not melt until reaching red-hot temperatures of nearly 3000F.” And yet jet fuel burns at 1500 degrees. Not even “conspiracists” are able to change the laws of physics, Ms. Stillwell, although in the upside down world of the neocons, where Karl Rove dictates reality, kerosene melts just about anything, including Kryptonite. “French left-wing activist and author Thierry Meyssan has made a career out of such claims. In his books ‘L’Effroyable Imposture’ (The Big Lie) and ‘Le Pentegate,’ Meyssan takes great pains to present an alternative scenario for American Airlines Flight 77 and the attack on the Pentagon. Pointing to the seeming disappearance of the airplane after it plowed into the building and the small amount of resulting debris, Meyssan posits that the U.S. government used some variation on a truck bomb, a smaller airplane or a missile to hit the Pentagon. In other words, the government attacked itself.” Never mind what the “left-wing activist” Thierry Meyssan claims—how do you, Ms. Stillwell, explain a huge jet airliner disappearing inside a sixteen foot hole, strewing no debris, luggage, seats, or bodies, and leaving the front lawn of the Pentagon as pristine as a putting green? Instead of explaining this, you seem more interested in making Meyssan out as a deluded “conspiracist.” But then that seems to be the purpose of your entire article—to make all of us who have questions out to be wild-eyed conspiracy nuts. Facts do not seem to interest you because you are going for the throat. I’ll leave alone your mention of antisemitism. It is simply too absurd to cover in any detail. All I will say is you can really tell somebody is desperate to defame and belittle when they drag out the old antisemitism canard. Of course, there are other fallacies you mention, and cite as if gospel truth (in particular about flight 93 and Pennsylvania) but this email is already far too long. Suffice it to say, as a “conservative” (or neocon), you have managed to create yet another flaccid hit piece, excoriating honest people as kooks and anti-Semites. I am not really surprised the San Francisco Chronicle has deemed it appropriate to publish your half-baked screed—but then that is how the corporate media earns its livelihood, selling government propaganda and unfairly characterizing Americans with questions about what really happened on nine eleven as nut cases essentially doing little more than falling “back on familiar demons,” sort of like a schizophrenic sans medication. It may work in the short run, Ms. Stillwell. But in the long run the truth about nine eleven will come out. Dare I speculate you will be writing about gardening for the San Francisco Chronicle when that time finally arrives? |
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