9/11 Eighteen Years Later

Eighteen years ago today, nearly 3,000 Americans lost their lives when both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center were attacked by terrorists. The official narrative is that the terrorists were a group of nineteen Arabs armed with box cutters and plastic knives. The prevailing view in the anti- establishment world is that the terrorists were associated with the U.S. government.

While our leaders did absolutely nothing on the day in question, in response to hijacked planes being crashed into buildings, for some hour and a half, after it was over they reacted quite aggressively. The consensus was that 9/11 had “changed the world forever,” and that we were now battling an unclear, unidentifiable enemy, referred to conveniently as the “war on terror.”

According to the ACLU, some 762 “suspects” were arrested in the wake of 9/11, and none of them were found to have any ties to “terrorism.” Anyone named Mohammad became suspect in the public’s eye. An Arabic fellow I worked with at the time was absolutely terrified, and seriously considered changing his name to something that sounded less “terrorist.”

Less than a month after the attacks, the U.S. began bombing alleged “Taliban” and “Al Qaeda” targets in Afghanistan. When Bradley/Chelsea Manning exposed the atrocious behavior of U.S. troops there (as well as in Iraq), the response was not a hero’s parade or a Congressional Medal of Honor, it was instead a long prison sentence for whistle blowing. Hidden History: An Exp... Donald Jeffries Best Price: $9.86 Buy New $14.70 (as of 04:30 UTC - Details)

On October 26, 2001, our Congress passed the completely unconstitutional Patriot Act. It is still difficult to tabulate all the violations of our civil liberties that stem from this odious legislation. In 2002, Congress approved the Homeland Security Act, which created the most monstrous bureaucracy imaginable- the Department of Homeland Security- and our rights became further eroded. The secret NSA spying grew out of this climate of secrecy, fostered by the approval of our leaders, and led directly to the disclosures of Edward Snowden, who like Manning was considered a traitor instead of a hero by much of the dumbed down, deluded public.

Iraq was invaded by U.S. forces in 2003, under the presumption that their leader Saddam Hussein had been involved in the 9/11 attacks. Eventually, it would be acknowledged that there was no evidence tying Iraq to 9/11, and Hussein’s mythical “weapons of mass destruction” were never found. Very few asked why such a diabolical dictator, having accumulated these deadly weapons, would fail to use them against an invasion by the world’s greatest military power. Exactly when was he planning to use them? What was he saving them for?

The 9/11 Commission served the same purpose as the Warren Commission had forty years earlier. Stacked with predictable, insider names, their conclusions were preordained. None of the myriad of questions raised by those denigrated as “truthers” were investigated or even honestly addressed.

I covered the events of 9/11 in some depth in my book Hidden History. We have yet to see a single unbiased documentary or news report aired on any television network, questioning the ludicrous official story. Even celebrities who have dared to question the impossible narrative, like Rosie O’Donnell and Charlie Sheen, have been mocked and ridiculed by the mainstream media. There are countless unanswered and unexplained aspects of the events of September 11, 2001. I will go over a few briefly.

Before September 11, 2001, no steel-framed high-rise building had ever been known to collapse from a fire. On 9/11, three did, including WTC Building 7, which was not struck by any planes or debris. Since 9/11, there have been no more such collapses. In 1991, a 38 floor building in Philadelphia was in flames for 18 hours, but never fell. A 2004 fire in a Venezuelan skyscraper raged on 26 different floors for more than 17 hours, but the building remained intact. In 2013, a high-rise in Chechnya burned for 29 hours without collapsing.

There are a multitude of photographic studies, still widely available on the internet, which show conclusively that the plane alleged to have struck the Pentagon simply couldn’t have done so. There should have been a great deal of debris seen in photos taken immediately afterward the crash. Instead, we see virtually nothing. Since the hole made from the impact of whatever hit the Pentagon is far too small to have been Flight 77, and there are no marks where the wings hit the building or any large chunks sheared off and left outside, we are left with an impossible resolution. If Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, what happened to the wings?

On this anniversary, the usual crowds will gather at New York’s Memorial Plaza. There will, as always, be an absolute absence of doubt about the official story. Such “negativity” will never be permitted at these ceremonies. The dead will be “honored” by an adherence to an impossible fairy tale. President Obama started his morning off by observing a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m., the time when the first hijacked plane had hit the World Trade Center’s north tower. There will be no moments of skepticism, no moments of questioning the unending flaws in the official narrative, or the subsequent loss of our civil liberties.

The world did indeed “change forever” with the events of September 11, 2001. The already burgeoning authoritarianism in America greatly accelerated, resulting in the evolving police state we must presently endure. As President George W. Bush admonished us, “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.” In this new kind of “war,” every critic of the state, every individual or group that questions authority, becomes a potential “terrorist.” And we thought the old WWII veterans were unreasonable when they advised the hippies to “love or leave” America.

What has been constructed in the wake of 9/11 is more frightening than any images of crafty Muslims gathering secretly behind closed doors, plotting revenge in the name of Allah. Whether the constantly changing name of the enemy is Al Qaeda, Isis, Isil, or “Islamo-Fascists,” they don’t threaten our liberties, our rights, and our freedom the way our own leaders do. Crimes and Cover-ups i... Donald Jeffries Best Price: $17.17 Buy New $17.19 (as of 06:20 UTC - Details)

Imagine life today, if the events of 9/11 had never occurred. No Patriot Act. No Homeland Security. No invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. No drones. No assassinations of American citizens, with the deplorable, ensuing boasting from the assassins. No smearing of any dissent with references to “terrorism” and how we must give up our liberties in order to stay secure. I believe Benjamin Franklin made an insightful remark about that a very long time ago.

Donald Trump seemed to hint at distrusting the official story of 9/11 during his campaign. He certainly went out of his way to denigrate George W. Bush in this regard, confronting Jeb Bush directly, and declaring “The World Trade Center came down during your brother’s reign. Remember that,” during the Republican Party presidential debates. But as in other areas, Trump has been a monumental disappointment here, ranting against the “terrorists” as passionately as any of his opponents. Back in 2001, businessman Trump had noted that there had to have been some kind of explosives in the twin towers.

In the typically flag-waving memorial ceremony outside the Pentagon today, Trump warned the Taliban, “They thought they would use this attack to show strength but what they actually showed is unrelenting weakness,” after cancelling a scheduled meeting with Taliban leaders, which seems to have precipitated the sudden departure of his warmongering National Security advisor John Bolton yesterday. “If for any reason they come back to our country, we will go wherever they are and use power the likes of which the United States has never used before,” Trump went on to say, sounding much more like the neocon leader he has proven to be than anyone interested in 9/11 truth.

If we can avoid getting caught up in the media-fueled emotion, it would be prudent to question what really happened that day. If we were lied to about the events of 9/11, that makes everything that resulted from those events at least as questionable. It’s a badge of honor to be a “truther,” or one who seeks the truth. If you aren’t a “truther,” then what are you?