The Garden

September 11, 2008 marks the seven-year anniversary of the Sept.11, 2001 attacks (hereafter 9/11), and, to this day, there is yet to be a single, systematic charge of guilt assigned to those believed to be responsible for the tragedy. This and other oddities about 9/11 have led many to doubt that we have been told the truth about 9/11. On this seven-year anniversary, I would like to encourage everyone to revisit what they think they know about 9/11 by pointing out a few problems I have found with the story of 9/11.

According to the accepted (or “official”) account of 9/11, 19 Al Qaeda members hijacked four commercial airliners on the morning of 9/11 and crashed two of these airplanes into each of the World Trade Center’s (WTC) 110-story Twin Towers (initiating the complete collapse of both buildings plus a third 47-story building known as WTC 7), one plane into the Pentagon, and another into a field in Pennsylvania. All of this, the official story says, was done under the direction of Osama Bin Laden, who was believed to be located somewhere in Afghanistan.

This account, which government officials offered mere days after 9/11 itself, has endured relatively unaltered for the entire seven years since, despite numerous challenges to its validity by critics. In fact, the most well-known investigations into 9/11 were partially motivated by dissenters who felt the official story was inadequate. These investigations include the 9/11 Commission Report (2004), which was instigated by family members of 9/11 victims unsatisfied with the official account; and two reports by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) addressing the unprecedented building collapses in the WTC complex: the first addressing the collapse of the Twin Towers (2005) and the second addressing the collapse of WTC 7 (2008).

Despite the amount of effort and money spent on these three official reports, there is still no formal charge of guilt or legal proceeding that demonstrates how and why it is that Osama Bin Laden and these 19 hijackers were blamed for the crime of 9/11. In all three official reports, the guilt of Bin Laden and the 19 hijackers was simply assumed by the authors. In the case of the 9/11 Commission Report, the authors went to great lengths to give narratives about who the hijackers were and how they behaved on 9/11, but no detailed explanation of how it was that these men were determined to be the guilty party was offered. In fact, CNN published a story entitled “U.S. rejects Taliban offer to try Bin Laden” on October 7, 2001—when the invasion of Afghanistan was just getting under way—stating that the Taliban (the ruling body in Afghanistan at the time) actually offered to turn over Bin Laden to the U.S. if the U.S. simply presented a case against Bin Laden. The White House flatly refused to give the Taliban any evidence demonstrating Bin Laden’s guilt, and instead responded with violence. Now, if the White House in fact did have definitive evidence of Bin Laden’s guilt all the way back in October 2001 (as the article says they claimed to have had), it’s bad enough to wonder why they would not simply honor the Taliban’s request for a trial before resorting to intense violence (is not democracy marked by its allegiance to law and order?), but it is even more puzzling to think that now—seven whole years later—we still have not seen any kind of formal case against those accused for orchestrating 9/11. Further still, the FBI’s Most Wanted list, which contains Osama Bin Laden, curiously does not list 9/11 as a crime Bin Laden is wanted for. Given these facts, I believe it is worthwhile at this time to ask, and keep asking, Why is there no formal case against Bin Laden?

In the absence of a convincing case against Bin Laden, vigilant citizens are forced to speculate about what else might have happened on 9/11, and what to make of the last seven years of the so-called “War on Terror.” Some of these speculations have cast suspicions about our own government’s involvement in the events of 9/11. For example, many have challenged the idea that the two alleged airplane crashes at the WTC complex could have, by themselves, caused the total, rapid and symmetric collapse of three steel-framed skyscrapers. The two NIST reports mentioned above were assembled to do exactly that, however the success of these reports is fiercely debated.

The latest NIST report (available at wtc.nist.gov), which addressed the collapse of WTC 7, was released Aug. 21, 2008. This report is highly controversial because it asserts that the 47-story steel-framed WTC 7 building was the first modern high-rise building in history to completely collapse due to nothing other than an ordinary office fire. During an Aug. 21 press conference, NIST’s lead investigator, Shyam Sunder, stated the following: “This study has identified thermal expansion as a new phenomenon that can cause structural collapse. For the first time we have shown that fire can induce a progressive collapse” (emphasis added). Mr. Sunder also referred to this “new phenomenon” as an “extraordinary event” and said that the effects of “thermal expansion” until now have not been “explicitly considered” when testing for fire resistance. Critics, including this author, have been highly suspicious over the last seven years over what in fact led to WTC 7’s demise on 9/11, and NIST’s recent attempt to explain the event by invoking a “new” and “extraordinary” phenomenon does little to assuage this suspicion; in fact, it serves to augment it. New scientific phenomena do not simply appear out of nowhere when unusually tragic events occur. Even though WTC 7 caught fire on 9/11, it still ought to be subject to the same kinds of physical laws as every previous instance of high-rise office fires has been. This appeal to a new physical principle suggests that NIST is desperately reaching to sustain the official story of 9/11 without admitting that something other than the alleged 19 hijackers was involved in the destruction of WTC 7. In short, this report fails to adequately explain what happened to WTC 7 on 9/11, and fuels suspicions of a cover-up.

The above concerns about 9/11 are only a few out of many, but I believe they capture why today, seven years later, the general public still has good reason to doubt the official story of 9/11, and by extension, the legitimacy of their government. If Osama Bin Laden is guilty of orchestrating 9/11, a formal case citing compelling evidence ought to be publicly filed against him. Failure to do so is a betrayal of our judicial principles; and the violence waged against Afghanistan is, and has been, exceedingly unjust. Further, physical anomalies like that of WTC 7 indicate that no compelling case could likely be brought against Bin Laden because the extent of the damage at the WTC complex exceeds the amount of damage two airplane crashes alone could be capable of.

So, on this seven-year anniversary, I encourage everyone to resist the temptation to blindly accept the flawed official account of 9/11, and to revisit the issue with fresh, critical eyes. To illustrate what is likely at stake here, I leave you with the provident words of Voltaire: As long as people believe absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 7th, 2008 at 13:25 and is filed under Ranger News Editorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.