Gore Vidal's essay 'The Enemy Within' was published on October 27, 2002 in
the print edition of The Observer. In it Vidal claims that what he calls a "Bush
junta" planned and carried out the terrorist attacks as a pretext to enact a
pre-existing agenda to invade Afghanistan and attack civil liberties in the
U.S.
"We still don't know by whom we were struck that infamous Tuesday,
or for what true purpose. But it is fairly plain to many civil libertarians
that 9/11 put paid not only to much of our fragile Bill of Rights but also to
our once-envied system of government which had taken a mortal blow the
previous year when the Supreme Court did a little dance in 5/4 time and
replaced a popularly elected President with the oil and gas Bush-Cheney
junta."
Internet radio and print columnist Alex Jones
of Infowar.com now states without equivocation:
"My friends, the government just didn't have prior knowledge of
the September 11th al Qaeda attacks. They actually funded, trained, protected,
coddled, and shepherded al Qaeda into this country. Trained many of the
terrorists at Pensacola Naval Air Station, U.S.A., threatened F.B.I. and
defense intelligence officers who tried to stop al Qaeda, threatened them with
arrest. Bush signed now public document W199I two months before September 11,
threatening them with arrest if they tried to stop al Qaeda."
Before you dismiss Jones as a "conspiracy
nut," I recommend you view his video, The Road to Tyranny, available online HERE. I suggest
you'll be surprised at how much documented evidence for his conclusion he's able
to assemble.
Jones's claim about the Bush complicity in 9/11
is part of a much larger picture he paints:
- a history of governments creating catastrophes to galvanize their people
into jingoism and compliant surrender of their liberties (Rome, Nazi Germany,
the U.S. in 1941)
- how 9/11 is part of a larger conspiracy to create a totalitarian police
state in the United States
You Can't Bury Your Head in the Sand
But even if you don't think that there's enough
evidence to conclude that 9/11 was a Bush conspiracy, you need to:
- review and face all the facts
- consider carefully all the relevant hypotheses
- select that hypothesis which has the preponderance of evidence to support
it
In regard to 9/11, there are two
main hypotheses, with sub-hypotheses branching out from them:
- the Bush administration was complicit in the terrorist attack on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon
- the Bush administration was not complicit in the terrorist attack on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon
The Bush administration, the
rabid right, and even some reputedly left-leaning liberals are warning us that
any serious consideration of the hypothesis that 9/11 was a Bush conspiracy is a
flight into lunacy.
In an extraordinarily insightful
essay, Bev Conover, Online Journal Editor and Publisher, asks the absolutely
essential question:
Has the Establishment Left become a Handmaiden of the
Republican Right?
"Gangway for the self-appointed gatekeepers of the left who are on
a crusade to spin, smear, attack, and label as loony anyone who won't accept
the official line that the events leading up to and surrounding September 11
are nothing more than a series of coincidences and intelligence
failures."
What Ms. Conover calls a "cabal of lily-livered
leftists, ensconced in their ivory towers," includes such supposed "stars" as
Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy; David
Corn, The Nation's Washington editor; Michael
Albert, co-founder of Z Magazine and system operator of the
magazine's Znet.org; Steve Rendall, FAIR's senior analyst; Chip Berlet, senior
research analyst for Political Research Associates; Larry Bensky of Pacifica
Radio's flagship station, KPFA; and Noam Chomsky, writer, philosopher, and
professor of linguistics at MIT.
As Conover points out, the dread
list of "conspiracy nuts" includes not only such usual suspects as Mike Ruppert
of CopVCia website notoriety, but also the newest "arch conspiracist," then
Georgia Representative Cynthia McKinney, who had the temerity to call for an
investigation into what the Bush administration knew before the attacks and the
connection of Bush and the Carlyle Group, one of the largest corporations which
is profiting handsomely from the "war on terrorism."
Ms. Conover ends her thoughtful essay with a
salient question:
"So how do we explain this behavior of the lily-livered left? If
the Ivory Tower gentlemen are leaving it to us in the trenches to get to the
truth, because they won't dirty their hands to help us collect the bits and
pieces to connect the dots, why then are they so ferociously attacking our
efforts? Are they currying favor with someone? Is it time for us to start
following the money?"
Yes, indeed it's time we started following the
money to explain the gutlessness of the establishment "liberals" and also to
follow the money in the entire 9/11 phenomenon to see who profits from this
catastrophe and how.
Self-Informed Citizens Want to Know
If you're going to make sense of the
World Trade Center/Pentagon catastrophe, you're going to have to dare to think
the "unthinkable."
Certainly the "High Cabal" (as L. Fletcher
Prouty depicted it), which has been the controlling power behind both Democratic
and Republican administrations since the time of Kennedy, has no trouble
thinking and carrying out the unthinkable:
- forcing America into the Gulf War and the Afghanistan War to protect
corporate oil interests, resulting in American soldiers being killed along
with an uncounted number of enemy civilians
- creating a plan, approved by all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
titled "Operation Northwoods":
- a military operation involving the murder of American civilians as a way
to create a pretext for a military operation against Cuba
- the plan included assassinations and bombs in American cities, blowing
up American ships in Cuban harbors, hijacking American airplanes
- according to "Operation Northwoods" "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers
would cause a helpful wave of national indignation"
- the current Bush administration creating plans for nuclear first strike
military actions
None of us likes to think that our
own government would deliberately carry out a murderous attack on its own
people. But that hypothesis has to be given equal weight with the theory that
the Bush administration was not complicit in 9/11.
We need to consider all relevant sub-hypotheses
in coming to an informed opinion:
- the Bush administration was complicit in the terrorist attack on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon
- this is part of a larger conspiracy to change the face of government in
the U.S.
- the 9/11 attack was a (CIA, FBI, military, ???) operation gone
wrong
- the Bush administration was not complicit in the terrorist attack on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon
- but they did have prior knowledge of possible dangers and chose to do
nothing
- and they had no prior knowledge of possible danger of terrorist
attack
You Need to Form a Definite Opinion To Be Able to Act Intelligently
In the coming months, you're going to have
to respond to what the Bush administration does. You can only respond sensibly
if you have at least a working hypothesis about what's really going on in
the world. Intelligent behavior involves analyzing the problems and issues
facing us to find an acceptable theoretical solution which we then test in
practice.
Intelligent, critical thinking involves
- reviewing and facing all the facts
- considering carefully all the relevant hypotheses
- selecting that hypothesis which has the preponderance of evidence to
support it
Having outlined the viable, relevant hypotheses,
you must now look at all the facts and see which hypothesis is supported with
the preponderance of evidence. In trying to figure out the 9/11 phenomenon,
you're not going to find many "smoking guns" (though perhaps you will find more
than you might suppose at first glance).
Having decided which hypothesis best fits the
facts as you know them, you'll then have a firm foundation for forming your
beliefs and selecting how you will respond to events in the future.
My purpose in this essay has been to provide a
framework for thought in trying to make sense of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, not
to review the evidence which supports or disproves the hypotheses and
sub-hypotheses.
I encourage you to dare to think
the unthinkable wherever it may take you. Don't let either right-wing
reactionaries or pseudo-liberals frighten you from making up your own mind as to
just what happened on September 11, 2001.
It's up to us to consider these questions as if
our lives depend on them--because they probably do.
Updates:
"We still don't know by whom we were struck that infamous Tuesday, or for what true purpose. But it is fairly plain to many civil libertarians that 9/11 put paid not only to much of our fragile Bill of Rights but also to our once-envied system of government which had taken a mortal blow the previous year when the Supreme Court did a little dance in 5/4 time and replaced a popularly elected President with the oil and gas Bush-Cheney junta."
Internet radio and print columnist Alex Jones of Infowar.com now states without equivocation:
"My friends, the government just didn't have prior knowledge of the September 11th al Qaeda attacks. They actually funded, trained, protected, coddled, and shepherded al Qaeda into this country. Trained many of the terrorists at Pensacola Naval Air Station, U.S.A., threatened F.B.I. and defense intelligence officers who tried to stop al Qaeda, threatened them with arrest. Bush signed now public document W199I two months before September 11, threatening them with arrest if they tried to stop al Qaeda."
Before you dismiss Jones as a "conspiracy
nut," I recommend you view his video, The Road to Tyranny, available online HERE. I suggest
you'll be surprised at how much documented evidence for his conclusion he's able
to assemble.
Jones's claim about the Bush complicity in 9/11 is part of a much larger picture he paints:
- a history of governments creating catastrophes to galvanize their people into jingoism and compliant surrender of their liberties (Rome, Nazi Germany, the U.S. in 1941)
- how 9/11 is part of a larger conspiracy to create a totalitarian police state in the United States
But even if you don't think that there's enough
evidence to conclude that 9/11 was a Bush conspiracy, you need to:
- review and face all the facts
- consider carefully all the relevant hypotheses
- select that hypothesis which has the preponderance of evidence to support it
In regard to 9/11, there are two
main hypotheses, with sub-hypotheses branching out from them:
- the Bush administration was complicit in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
- the Bush administration was not complicit in the terrorist attack on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon
In an extraordinarily insightful
essay, Bev Conover, Online Journal Editor and Publisher, asks the absolutely
essential question:
Has the Establishment Left become a Handmaiden of the Republican Right?
"Gangway for the self-appointed gatekeepers of the left who are on a crusade to spin, smear, attack, and label as loony anyone who won't accept the official line that the events leading up to and surrounding September 11 are nothing more than a series of coincidences and intelligence failures."
What Ms. Conover calls a "cabal of lily-livered leftists, ensconced in their ivory towers," includes such supposed "stars" as Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy; David Corn, The Nation's Washington editor; Michael Albert, co-founder of Z Magazine and system operator of the magazine's Znet.org; Steve Rendall, FAIR's senior analyst; Chip Berlet, senior research analyst for Political Research Associates; Larry Bensky of Pacifica Radio's flagship station, KPFA; and Noam Chomsky, writer, philosopher, and professor of linguistics at MIT.
As Conover points out, the dread
list of "conspiracy nuts" includes not only such usual suspects as Mike Ruppert
of CopVCia website notoriety, but also the newest "arch conspiracist," then
Georgia Representative Cynthia McKinney, who had the temerity to call for an
investigation into what the Bush administration knew before the attacks and the
connection of Bush and the Carlyle Group, one of the largest corporations which
is profiting handsomely from the "war on terrorism."
Ms. Conover ends her thoughtful essay with a salient question:
"So how do we explain this behavior of the lily-livered left? If the Ivory Tower gentlemen are leaving it to us in the trenches to get to the truth, because they won't dirty their hands to help us collect the bits and pieces to connect the dots, why then are they so ferociously attacking our efforts? Are they currying favor with someone? Is it time for us to start following the money?"
Yes, indeed it's time we started following the money to explain the gutlessness of the establishment "liberals" and also to follow the money in the entire 9/11 phenomenon to see who profits from this catastrophe and how.
If you're going to make sense of the
World Trade Center/Pentagon catastrophe, you're going to have to dare to think
the "unthinkable."
Certainly the "High Cabal" (as L. Fletcher Prouty depicted it), which has been the controlling power behind both Democratic and Republican administrations since the time of Kennedy, has no trouble thinking and carrying out the unthinkable:
- forcing America into the Gulf War and the Afghanistan War to protect corporate oil interests, resulting in American soldiers being killed along with an uncounted number of enemy civilians
- creating a plan, approved by all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
titled "Operation Northwoods":
- a military operation involving the murder of American civilians as a way
to create a pretext for a military operation against Cuba
- the plan included assassinations and bombs in American cities, blowing up American ships in Cuban harbors, hijacking American airplanes
- according to "Operation Northwoods" "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation"
- a military operation involving the murder of American civilians as a way
to create a pretext for a military operation against Cuba
- the current Bush administration creating plans for nuclear first strike military actions
None of us likes to think that our
own government would deliberately carry out a murderous attack on its own
people. But that hypothesis has to be given equal weight with the theory that
the Bush administration was not complicit in 9/11.
We need to consider all relevant sub-hypotheses
in coming to an informed opinion:
- the Bush administration was complicit in the terrorist attack on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon
- this is part of a larger conspiracy to change the face of government in the U.S.
- the 9/11 attack was a (CIA, FBI, military, ???) operation gone wrong
- the Bush administration was not complicit in the terrorist attack on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon
- but they did have prior knowledge of possible dangers and chose to do nothing
- and they had no prior knowledge of possible danger of terrorist attack
In the coming months, you're going to have
to respond to what the Bush administration does. You can only respond sensibly
if you have at least a working hypothesis about what's really going on in
the world. Intelligent behavior involves analyzing the problems and issues
facing us to find an acceptable theoretical solution which we then test in
practice.
Intelligent, critical thinking involves
- reviewing and facing all the facts
- considering carefully all the relevant hypotheses
- selecting that hypothesis which has the preponderance of evidence to support it
Having outlined the viable, relevant hypotheses,
you must now look at all the facts and see which hypothesis is supported with
the preponderance of evidence. In trying to figure out the 9/11 phenomenon,
you're not going to find many "smoking guns" (though perhaps you will find more
than you might suppose at first glance).
Having decided which hypothesis best fits the facts as you know them, you'll then have a firm foundation for forming your beliefs and selecting how you will respond to events in the future.
My purpose in this essay has been to provide a framework for thought in trying to make sense of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, not to review the evidence which supports or disproves the hypotheses and sub-hypotheses.
I encourage you to dare to think
the unthinkable wherever it may take you. Don't let either right-wing
reactionaries or pseudo-liberals frighten you from making up your own mind as to
just what happened on September 11, 2001.
It's up to us to consider these questions as if our lives depend on them--because they probably do.
Updates:
