Originally Published on OpEdNews, October 17, 2008. Never more needed.
https://www.opednews.com/articles/To-Muslims-of-America-I-A-by-Steve-Beckow-081017-492.html
A growing consensus of Americans (and, in my case, Canadians) believe that 9/11 was a “false flag” operation carried out by the Bush administration and their agents in the American military and intelligence communities. (1)
According to people who’ve studied the situation, 9/11 was not caused by 19 Middle-Eastern hijackers with boxcutters; it was an inside job like the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 and the bombing of the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967. (2)
Besides curtailing civil rights, the conspiracy seems to have been aimed at frightening the American people into agreeing to attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran. The aim appears to have been to capture Middle-East poppy fields and oil fields and establish American hegemony before the American economy itself collapsed from debt and the greenback fell as the world’s premier currency. (3)
According to Michael Meacher, former British cabinet minister, the administration had been negotiating with the Taliban for a pipeline right-of-way through Afghanistan. They had offered a carpet of gold or a carpet of bombs and the Taliban refused the gold. (4)
Some say that the plans for the invasion of Afghanistan were already in place before 9/11; that the troops were already positioned. They allege that, prior to 9/11, George Bush had the necessary papers to go to war ready for signing on his desk. (5)
In my view, a view which is not shared by all others in the 9/11 Truth Movement, the North and South Towers were not hit by passenger planes, but by remote-controlled missiles. These allegations explain the pod the proponents of this view point to on the belly of the aircraft that hit Tower 2, the testimony of an eyewitness that the plane that hit Tower 2 had no passenger windows and was not a passenger jet, and the tight flight manouevres that would have rendered a pilot unconscious and would have been overridden by the plane’s onboard computer. (6)
The people I’ve found convincing point out that all the aircraft involved in 9/11 were followed from the first indications of abnormality by air traffic controllers, but that neither NORAD nor the Pentagon responded to the emergencies. Certainly the FAA knew by 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 11 that an emergency was playing out, a time well before the first crash. This time allowance would have been sufficient for NORAD to have launched interceptors and have brought down the “airliners.” (7)
The fact that all NORAD planes would be away over Canada on a “training” mission at precisely this time fits with things having been set up. I find these circumstances to be not credible.
Again, the people I’ve found convincing argue that the North and South Towers, as well as World Trade Center Building 7, were brought down by thousands of thermate cutter charges. This explanation accounts for the demolition “squibs” observable in the news coverage and the explosive auras bursting outwards as they collapsed.
The fact that the buildings were brought down by controlled demolition is also inferable from the time it took the buildings to collapse (around 8 seconds), and corroborated by reputable architects, engineers, emergency responders, and demolitions experts. (8)
To bring a building down by controlled demolition takes extensive planning over days, if not weeks, moving the date of preparation well back before 9/11. Therefore, nineteen Middle-Eastern hijackers with boxcutters could not possibly have engaged in the extensive planning required or have installed thousands of explosives in the three WTC buildings. (9) The official story fails to account for these facts as well.
According to the view I hold, the Pentagon was hit by a guided missile, as Donald Rumsfeld himself affirmed in a subsequent magazine interview. (10) Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski worked at the Pentagon and went outside on 9/11 to look at the damage. What she saw shocked her. There was no wreckage on the scene (wings, tail, engines, seats, luggage, bodies). There was an entry hole only 20 feet wide.
No adjacent windows were smashed. The lawn was not damaged or scorched. She thought the scene consistent with a missile attack, but not with an airplane crash. (11) Government involvement would explain why the FBI confiscated all film footage and released only five inconclusive frames from all the footage available. (12)
Hani Hanjour, alleged to have piloted the “aircraft,” may have been part of the government’s plot insofar as he trained at an American flight school. His instructor said he was incompetent at flying. The instructor could not imagine Hanjour piloting a 757.
When one adds to the record the fact that the flight data recorder shows a rapid descent and a bank which a passenger jet could hardly have made and then a precision hit on the first floor of the building which military pilots have said they would find difficult, the hypothesis that Hani Hanjour flew whatever hit the Pentagon becomes too improbable to be believed. (13) Again the official story falls short.
As for the rest of the “hijackers,” the theory is that some of them were paid money to attend flight school, but that is the extent of their role. Mohammed Atta was paid $100,000 on Sept. 11, the payment being made in Washington through a Pakistani ISI general.
On 9/11, Atta entered the United States and was photographed at the airport, following which he took a connecting flight back out of the United States. (14) No Arab names appear on any of the flights’ manifests. (15)
The serendipitous survival and discovery of a “hijacker’s” passport in excellent condition near Ground Zero after the total destruction of the North and South Towers is too improbable to accept. (16) The lack of credibility of such an event must implicate the agents who put the story forward.
At least six of the “hijackers” were found alive and well after 9/11; one was surprised to see his name in the news. This element of the official story is so important that I shall quote at length the evidence refuting it:
“The New Pearl Harbor reported evidence that at least six of the alleged hijackers are still alive. David Harrison of the Telegraph interviewed two of the men who supposedly died on Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, one of whom said that he ‘had never even heard of Pennsylvania,’ let alone died there. The Associated Press reported that Waleed al-Shehri, supposedly on Flight 11, contacted the U.S. embassy in Morocco about two weeks after 9/11. The 9/11 Commission Report, nevertheless, suggested that al-Shehri was responsible for stabbing one of the flight attendants shortly before Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower.” (17)
“Saeed Al-Ghamdi, Mohand Al-Shehri, Abdul Aziz Al-Omari and Salem Al-Hazmi ‘are not dead and had nothing to do with the heinous terror attacks in New York and Washington,’ the Saudi Arabian embassy told the Orlando Sentinel.”
“Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal told the Arabic Press after meeting with President George W. Bush on Sept. 20th [that] “it was proved that five of the names included in the FBI list had nothing to do with what happened.” (18)
Again, the official story does not hold up, in my opinion.
Some news reports point out that Osama bin Laden stayed in the American military hospital in Dubai and was visited by the local CIA chief in June/July 2001. (19) At that time, he was wanted for the African embassy bombings, but no one attempted to arrest or harm him.
Others point out that, on Sept. 10, 2001, Osama bin Laden was admitted into a Pakistani hospital for his renal condition. He was closely guarded by the Pakistani military, though no explanations were furnished as to why. Surely the U.S. would have been aware of bin Laden’s whereabouts on Sept. 11. (20)
Again, one has to notice that the FBI is not actively pursuing bin Laden for 9/11, as their spokesmen have said and as their website wanted poster demonstrates. (21) Last January, the CIA shut down its team dedicated to finding bin Laden. (22)
Why would they do that if bin Laden was the author of the worst crime in U.S. history? Another failure of the official story to account for the facts.
One of the frustrations of investigating events that are being covered up is that the investigator can say what sounds untrue (contradictory, improbable, implausible, etc.), but one cannot say what is true. I therefore have no idea if Osama bin Laden actually played some role in 9/11, but, if he did, increasingly that role comes to resemble a part paid for by his puppetmasters at the CIA. All the inconsistencies and contradictions in the official story on Osama bin Laden call it into question again.
Why do I bring up these events? I don’t bring them up because I want you to subscribe to my view of 9/11 as what really happened on that day. I don’t know what really happened. Does anyone else but the perpetrators? The truth is what we want.
I write this article to say that it does seem clear to me that 9/11 was “made in America” and made by what appear to be “our” officials at the highest levels of power.
Following these events, these same officials dictated a policy of rounding up American Muslims, racially-profiling them at airports, and treating the community with suspiciousness, knowing full well that they – the officials themselves – had caused the catastrophe and not the American Muslim community.
I acknowledge here that I know practically nothing of the Muslim community or Islam. I’m not an expert on 9/11 either. It wasn’t my intention to offer opinions on any of those topics.
It was my intention to offer my apologies to the world Muslim community for having bought the official story of 9/11 for so long and shared in the suspiciousness it promoted towards them.
I ask your forgiveness.
Looking from the vantage point I do now, I see no grounds for blaming Muslims for 9/11.
Footnotes
(1) See for example www.patriotsquestion911.org and www.911truth.org.
(2) On the Gulf of Tonkin incident, see “The Gulf of Tonkin Incident,” Wikipedia, https://tinyurl.com/2tcalk, 12 Sept. 2007; David Ray Griffin, “Myth Number 1: Our political and military leaders simply would not do such a thing,” https://tinyurl.com/2tqu34; on U.S.S. Liberty, see Paul Joseph Watson, “Former Reagan Deputy and Colonel Says 9/11 ‘Dog That Doesn’t Hunt,’” Knowledge Driven Revolution, 29 June 2006, https://tinyurl.com/3yzozu; “U.S.S. Liberty Incident,” Wikipedia, https://tinyurl.com/zny38; Jim Marrs, Journalist and Author of Rule by Secrecy in the video One Nation Under Seige.
(3) Michael Meacher, “This war on terrorism is bogus,” The Guardian, 6 Sept. 2003; Mike Whitney, “The Dollar’s Full-System Meltdown,” Global Research, 31 Oct. 2006; “Interview with David Ray Griffin,” Whole Life Times, https://tinyurl.com/36lh4b7.
(4) See Sources in footnote 3, as well as Michel Chossudovsky, “Is the Bush Administration Planning a Nuclear Holocaust? Will the US launch ‘Mini-nukes’ against Iran in Retaliation for Tehran’s ‘Non-compliance’?” Global Research, 22 February 2006; Chossudovsky, “The Criminalization of US Foreign Policy. From the Truman Doctrine to the Neo-Conservatives,” Global Research, 5 February 2007.
(5) Meacher, ibid.; Alex Jones and Charlie Sheen on radio at PrisonPlanet.tv, https://tinyurl.com/erh7b.
(6) Videos, Loose Change, 9/11: In Plane Site and 9/11: The Ripple Effect.
(7) Former Boston Center controller Robin Hordon interviewed by Pilots for 9/11 Truth in Aviation Reality on 9/11, https://tinyurl.com/2vn4oa; Hordon, Former FAA Air Traffic Controller at the Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center, located in Nashua, NH, 1970 – 1981. Former Certified Commercial Pilot. Former Certified Flight Instructor and Certified Ground Instructor. Www.PatriotsQuestion9/11.com, received 28 July 2007; Mark Ehrman, “Getting Agnostic about 9/11,” L.A. Times.com Magazine, 28 August 2005.
(8) Richard Gage, “Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth,” https://tinyurl.com/23cspo, downloaded 28 July 2007; Gibb Wake, “Iraq war veteran and experienced demolitions expert blows the cover on 9/11 inside job,” National Writer’s Syndicate, 31 July 2007, https://tinyurl.com/29p7ut; Dr. David Ray Griffin, “9/11 and the Mainstream Press,” 9/11 Visibility Project, 29 July 2005, https://tinyurl.com/2fapll; “America’s Leading Collapse Expert Thought South Tower Was Brought Down With Explosives,” 911blogger.com, https://www.911blogger.com/node/11241.
(9) Statement of Barbara Honegger, MS, Patriots Question 9/11, https://tinyurl.com/yr3yge; New Jersey Emergency Medical Technician who wishes to be known only by his first name, Mike, writing to Loose Change producer Dylan Avery, Conspiracy Planet, 7 August 2007, https://tinyurl.com/ytqdaf7.
(10) Interview with Parade Magazine, shown in the video Loose Change.
(11) Statement of Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D., Patriots Question 9/11, downloaded https://www.patriotsquestion911.com/.
(12) Bill McKelway, “Three Months On, Tension Lingers Near the Pentagon,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, 11 Dec. 2001, https://tinyurl.com/3qe7a; Dr. David Ray Griffin, “9/11 and the Mainstream Press,” 9/11 Visibility Project, 29 July 2005, https://tinyurl.com/2fapll.
(13) Dr. David Ray Griffin, “9/11 and the Mainstream Press,” ibid.; Russ Wittenberg, commercial and Air Force pilot who flew two of the planes used in 9/11, Wing TV, in Loose Change, https://tinyurl.com/2ug2kg ; Statement of Barbara Honegger, ibid.; Statement of Commander Ted Muga, U.S. Navy (ret), Patriots Question 9/11, https://www.patriotsquestion911.com; Statement of Lt. Col. Jeff Latas, Patriots Question 9/11, https://tinyurl.com/ypyzrm; video 9/11: In Plane Site.
(14) 9/11Truth.org, Answers to 9/11 Families’ Questions, posted 20 July 2007 at https://tinyurl.com/246peb; Statement of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, former 6-term Congresswoman from Georgia 1993 – 2002, 2005 – 2006; member of the House Armed Services Committee and Member of the International Relations Committee, Patriots Question 9/11, https://tinyurl.com/g56bh.
(15) David Ray Griffin in https://www.911truth.dk/first/en/faq.htm.
(16) Tony Rennell, “9/11 on Trial,” Daily Mail, 6 Aug. 2005, https://tinyurl.com/d8xp4.
(17) Dr. David Ray Griffin, “9/11 and the Mainstream Press,” ibid.
(18) “Alleged Hijackers Alive and Well,” 9/11 Research, https://tinyurl.com/yrdwj2. See also Richard Heinberg, author, The Oil Depletion Protocol in Coincidences 9/11, Part 10.
(19) Video Loose Change.
(20) Loc. cit.
(21) https://tinyurl.com/syn8m, downloaded 31 July 2007; Dr. David Ray Griffin and Rob Balsamo, “Could Barbara Olson Have Made Those Calls? An Analysis of New Evidence about Onboard Phones,” Pilots for 911 Truth, 26 June 2007, https://tinyurl.com/2jspa6.
(22) “CIA Reportedly Disbands Bin Laden Unit,” ny9/11truth.org, https://www.ny911truth.org/