September 11: The Continuing Nightmare
Last night we watched a documentary on Sky AnytimeTV (on demand) entitled, 102 Minutes That Changed America, that was assembled from video footage from over 100 people who experienced the horrors of September 11, 2001, in New York City. Without any narration, the events unfolded from the perspective of the eyewitnesses who captured an amazing sense of the emotion and drama and disbelief. You can watch some of the footage on the History Channel’s website.
While doing a little more research on 9/11 this evening, I ran across the YouTube trailer (below) concerning an upcoming documentary on the serious health problems being experienced by thousands of ordinary people who voluntarily took time off to help in the search, rescue, and clean-up at Ground Zero. Quite a few of my co-workers (from the Florida Baptist Convention) drove to New York City as part of the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief effort. Their compassion for the victims translated into actions that may eventually threaten their own lives. The documentary, Three Weeks in September, will air sometime this Summer 2009. Here’s the video:
At the risk of being labeled a kook and a weirdo, I have watched a number of documentaries that question the official story behind the events of 9/11 and I think there are a lot of unanswered questions, perhaps of the same magnitude as those that should have been asked of the German government as it carried out the systematic slaughter of six million Jews. We often wonder, don’t we, why the good and honest people who lived under Hitler’s regime did not question their government’s actions? A growing number of Americans are joining The 9/11 Truth Movement, a grassroots collective that seeks to shed light on what really happened. Part of their stated mission is:
To expose the official lies and cover-up surrounding the events of September 11th, 2001 in a way that inspires the people to overcome denial and understand the truth; namely, that elements within the US government and covert policy apparatus must have orchestrated or participated in the execution of the attacks for these to have happened in the way that they did.
I have never believed that an airliner crashed into the Pentagon or into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Why? There’s no recognizable debris at either site that remotely resembles a large passenger plane: no landing gear, no engines, and no remnants of the fuselage or its contents, especially seats, bodies, and luggage. Look at the photographs and you will not find any evidence of a commercial airliner, just a large crater in a remote rural location and a relatively small hole in the side of the Pentagon. So we’re just supposed to believe the official story in spite of these glaring anomalies?
The separate incidents above cast suspicion on the World Trade Center (WTC) attacks as well, in my opinion. How did those towers simply collapse perfectly into their own foundations at near-freefall speeds that experts have declared to be virtually impossible without the aid of controlled demolition charges? And how else would the leaseholder, Larry Silverstein, of Building 7, also part of the WTC campus, know to have this third building rigged with explosives so he could give the “pull” order at 5:20 pm, seven hours after WTC 1 collapsed? I didn’t even know about the mysterious collapse of Building 7, but it would have taken a team of demolition experts several weeks to prepare a 47-story building for a precision “pull” (as Silverstein himself called it during a later PBS documentary).
As a nation, one day we may deeply regret our collective naiveté and trust of our elected leaders concerning this national tragedy. I’m not sure our generation can handle the truth of what really happened on September 11, 2001, as I think about the consequences it would bring. But I do believe that The 9/11 Truth Movement has the right idea when that time comes:
To seek justice and redress for those wronged on September 11th, or as a result of the events, beginning with complete disclosure of all records and evidence; reversal of all domestic and foreign policies following from the false premises of the official story; and full accountability for any and all individuals inside and outside the US government involved in the attacks who engaged in crimes of commission, facilitation, complicity, gross negligence, cover-up or obstruction of justice after the fact.
Hi Bill …
I almost can’t believe I’m going to do this, because the Revolutionary War character I most admire was Thomas Paine. I always think we should question everything the government does, because their motives are never as pure as we’d like to think.
However, I live 20 miles from the Pentagon and I saw the wreckage … complete with the plane. I know the people who pulled bodies from the building and people who were in the building that day. People who were eyewitnesses to what happened.
The folks who pulled bodies from the building were part of my husband’s old unit in the Army. He had just retired a few months earlier, otherwise he also would have been part of that detail. They are a music group and part of the Presidential Honor Guard, but their secondary mission is to provide support in case of attack on the nation’s capital. In this case, they assisted with pulling victims out of the wreckage at the Pentagon for almost a week. It was horrible, horrible duty. I saw the e-mail and heard the phone calls between my husband and his friends. It did happen. No one makes that up in real time.
I agree with you that there are still a number of questions that our government needs to answer about how and why these attacks happened. And why they keep using them to hold us hostage to taking away our freedom, instead of using that information to build real security in the future. But I don’t think this is necessarily the best way to go about doing that.
Sonja,
Thanks for the input! So far I have not seen any photographs from the Pentagon site that give credible evidence that a huge wide-body commercial airliner crashed there. If there are official photographs that prove these things, why hasn’t the military or the government offered them to satisfy the general public? Remarkably, the same thing holds true for the Shanksville: a very small crash site with very little debris for such a large aircraft. Even the WTC should have yielded some evidence from those two planes, since there were some large, virtually indestructible parts to both planes that would not have melted or been incinerated, even in the inferno of the initial impact.
As far as bodies go, I have no doubts about people being killed at the Pentagon. But I’m wondering if the ones pulled from the debris weren’t entirely Pentagon casualties—military and civilian who were working in that wing when the explosion took place. Surely it would have been difficult to determine who they were, in light of the way they died, except through DNA or other forensic methods. The human remains that were recovered in Shanksville represented a very small percentage (like 7%) of the plane’s occupants, nowhere near the 44 victims of Flight 93. I’m not sure any passenger remains were recovered and identified from the WTC.
I would love to read or hear testimony from anyone at the Pentagon who actually saw an American Airline 757 hit the building. If you have links, please post them.
I’ve really enjoyed reading your blog off and on for almost two years. But, this takes the cake. I honestly have to question the logical capacity of *anyone* who can fall for that.
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/911_pentagon_eyewitnesses.html
One of my employees was standing across the street from the WTC when it was hit. I was in my apartment across the Hudson river getting ready to go over and meet him by taking the train to the station beneath the WTC.
I can’t believe there are people who believe this was some conspiracy.
Hi Andy! Thanks for reading and commenting on my blog. I’m surprised it’s taken two years for us to disagree on something.
I could say the same things…that I question the logical capacity of anyone who can believe that three buildings could collapse with all the precision of a controlled demolition OR that an airline could hit the Pentagon in such a way that the entire plane (wings and engines included) would be forced into a relatively small hole with no evidence of the wings even striking the building. Perhaps this happens in the world of cartoon animation, but the laws of physics do not allow such things to happen.
No question that planes flew into the WTC, but there’s very little evidence to support the theory that it caused the twin towers to collapse as they did. That’s the part that raises huge suspicions for me. As for the Pentagon and Shanksville (PA) sites, what happened to the debris? How could it just vaporize? Too many experts have joined the 9/11 Truth Movement for me to accept the story that the U. S. government obviously wants everyone to believe. I’m normally NOT supportive of conspiracy theories, whether UFO’s or the Illuminati, but our government’s failure to provide supporting evidence (like the video footage from businesses near the Pentagon that would clearly show what hit the building) casts suspicion on what really happened.
Hope you keep reading!
Bill
Bill, I completely agree that the official story of the WTC collapse is a mistery. You are correct on the physics of free fall collapse. Any building that would collapse under its own weight (the official view) would have taken more than a minute to come down – not in the 9.6 seconds that it actually took without some sort of demolitions. Can any one explain to me why the firemen saw molten steal still running/melting in the pit of ground zero? Aviation fuel burns at a temperature of maybe 1500 degrees. Structural steel has a melting point of 3750 degrees or more. What could cause such a high temperature? Not aviation fuel that would have been mostly consumed on impact. And a smouldering building somehow igniting to 3750 degrees? Come on – no way. Let me propose a theory. During the first WTC attack that happened in the parking garage, did you know that the building was then protected by spraying asbestoes on all the structural steel to prevent fire from weakening the members? At the same time the building was rewired for security reasons. What if part of the rewiring was the planting of detonation cord and thermite explosives every second floor level? You are aware that the steel beams that were extracted for the site were mostly of 22 foot lenght? How convenient. Doesn’t that span two floors. Would a building collapsing from gravity break up into 22 foot sections? And the molten steel for days, weeks? Thermite can burn at over 4000 degrees, and is a military explosive – who else but the government could obtain it? So much was used to bring down the towers that the excess continued to burn and melt steel for days. Surprise? I am not. Did you know that the Patriot Act was already written and ready for the Presidents signiture before 9/11? How convenient to sell such a travisty of justice and liberty to the American people. We are almost part of a police state with that document and the additions Congress has been adding behind the scenes. It is time for true Americans to wake up. Thanks Dick