Nineteen years and 114 days ago the United States and the world were terrorized by the most brazen and murderous one-day massacre of civilians* in most people’s memory. And the terrorists of September 2001 succeeded. Billions throughout the world saw on television saw what they were told were hijacked civilian airliners commandeered by Muslim extremists (quickly identified as al Qaeda members) armed with box cutters flying the craft into two World Trade Center skyscrapers, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
The head of al Qaeda, Osama bin laden, didn’t take credit but rather repeatedly denied involvement. Officials and news media didn’t buy his denials.
Even if the news media managers wanted to comprehensively question the nascent official story, news operations were hampered from doing so by a second terrorist event that began one week later, the anthrax attacks against civilians. Alhough these killed only five people, these attacks sickened 17 others and appeared to target two U.S. senators. The anthrax episode competed with the 9/11 atrocity for the news media’s resources, as well as for the attention of people following events in the news.
Together the two terrorist events were a one-two punch to the American psyche. Preparations for the 9/11 attacks had to have been under way since well before the 2000 election was decided, and perhaps the anthrax attacks were as well.
The official stories of both don’t stand up, and are being progressively challenged. The evidence put forward by challengers—primarily through Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth and the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry—is not openly acknowledged by the political class or news media powers. It is not deemed invalid; instead it is treated as if it does not exist. Whatever breakthrough successes challengers achieve are not recorded outside of a handful of Internet sites and on social media.
Results of any research by journalists have not yet been shared with the public by news organizations—showings on PBS of the trailer for the documentary “Seven”** were paid for by money raised for the showings. In any case, distractions from the crime of the century, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, abound; the public’s attention has been consumed by election campaigns, the “Great Recession,” an erratic showman president (a professional actor), the new coronavirus, a new severe economic recession, the development and rollout of new vaccines, and the wars begun shortly after the September 2001 attacks.
“Good riddance to 2020” has been a common refrain over the last week as if 2021 just has to be an improvement and “things,” with luck, will “get back to normal.” For us 9/11 “truthers” normal would be a continuation of 19 years of willfully ignoring challenges to official accounts of the crime of the century. Normal amounts to institutional and societal whistling past the graveyard. This truther is hoping for an abnormal year ahead.
— Mark Channing MIller
– – –
* The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 may not count. The United States and Japan were at war and the bombing was done openly by the U.S. military and geared toward (a) ending Japan’s participation in the war quickly and (b) warning the rest of the world, especially the Soviet Union, that the United States could do the same thing elsewhere another time. If the bombings of those cities count as two separate geopolitical events, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were the third most murderous one-day massacre in most people’s memory in 2001. Brazen? No. It was wartime, there were factories in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the cruelty of Japanese against Allied forces’ prisoners of war may have been a factor.
** See past and future entries about “Seven” in this blog.